Little bit more.
Coming up with codenames is hard. The Nova's not a comfy ship... it's a bit of a U-boat. When not facing Nehallenia, they can run up the scrubbers and cool off... but otherwise it's going to get uncomfortably hot very quickly, even under some artificial shade.
True stealth in space may be impossible, but you can still do your best not to be noticed.
Cortana's communicated back with Fenspace via a second QED at Hedwig... bandwidth is pretty small, but it is enough.
Cortana using 'him' to refer to Jet, shows Cortana has done some research on Jet.
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Coming up with codenames is hard. The Nova's not a comfy ship... it's a bit of a U-boat. When not facing Nehallenia, they can run up the scrubbers and cool off... but otherwise it's going to get uncomfortably hot very quickly, even under some artificial shade.
True stealth in space may be impossible, but you can still do your best not to be noticed.
Cortana's communicated back with Fenspace via a second QED at Hedwig... bandwidth is pretty small, but it is enough.
Cortana using 'him' to refer to Jet, shows Cortana has done some research on Jet.
Quote:The air aboard the Destiny Nova was heavy... even the scrubbers had been shut off. A couple of low-power LED lights kept everything lit, but aside from them, everything was shut down. The heat aboard was getting intolerable, even though they were now on the shaded side of the asteroid, facing Nehallenia.________________________________
The Senshi crew were starting to wilt in the heat, some of them having long since stripped down to the bare essentials just to get cool. They’d even dropped the atmospheric pressure to the safest minimum, increasing the partial pressure of oxygen to compensate, solely to reduce vapour pressures and help them sweat.
It didn’t help much.
Mari considered switching to a full O2 atmosphere, dropping pressures to a minimum, but that just wasn’t safe. Not for the first time she found herself jealous of the cyborgs who could just step out onto the asteroid, or find shade under ship.
She checked a few settings, and turned off a few more unnecessary systems to reduce power drain from the batteries to just the couple of amps needed for the lighting. The engine field coils had been degaussed, and anything which generated a varying magnetic field was shut down. Electric motors, air scrubbers, even the computer systems had been throttled right back to a minimum. Desmond was kept at a low enough power to keep himself and Cortana amused with Team Fortress 2, and not much else.
Only DC systems were online. A constant magnetic field was easier to hide on an iron-nickle asteroid. Varying ones were obviously artificial.
They were hidden in a crater on an asteroid, under rock effect tarpaulin especially developed to diffuse their heat signature, to make it appear as little more than natural solar heating and re-radiation. It also happily acted as a nice radio reception antenna, while mimicking the reflection of the surrounding rock reasonably closely.
Cortana had not liked to be stuck inside another ship for that long, and neither had the Stargazer. The ships engine had shut down shortly after the cloaking sheet had been put over them and was refusing to produce much more than a standby trickle of energy. Luckily Cortana did not have that much problems with heat or oxygen storage, as an AI she only cared about some energy input and problems with overheating. Not being able to go around in the ship and talking with the people there was the worst part of the plan in her opinion.
Mari sat back in the pilot’s seat, looking out up at the underside of the sheet. They’d been aboard for about three days already. Three days aboard a hot, cramped ship, sweating buckets. She’d give the Boskonians who built her one thing at least, they were tough bastards to willing board a boat like this for weeks at a time. What it was like for the folks in the cargo hold, she tried so hard not to think about.
A small light flickered on the radio panel. Once, twice, three times, followed by a chirrup as a single message popped up onscreen.
She pulled herself over the vacant copilot’s seat to read it. It was just a simple short text message, only a few hundred characters at most.
It perked her spirits up no-end.
Running under radio silence , the best way to get in touch with the messages intended recipient was to open the hatch in the floor and shout down the length of the ship. Every pressure door had been jammed open anyway to let air circulate.
Forward, in the galley right at the bow of the ship, dinner for three Kunstler consisted solely of rip-pack self-warmed ready meals. They weren’t as bothered by the heat as the ordinary humans, having bodies capable dealing with it with little trouble.
Tiegel was busy finishing a story, while Jet was half buried in a bag of ‘food, and Lenneth was still trying to figure out how to rip hers open, without tearing it apart entirely.
“So, I get out and these turrets are still there and they go on alert,”
“They shot you?” Lenneth asked.
“No, that’s the damnedest thing.” he answered. “They started to sing,”
Jet didn’t appear surprised.
“Bullshit!” Lenneth snorted.The bag tore completely open, spilling it’s contents in a cascade of dessicated flavouring and textured protein. The heat pack fizzled on the floor “Motherfucker,” she grunted through gritted teeth.
Tiegel chuckled. Jet just smiled. “They did it for me too,” she said. “You just hafta complete the test courses.”
Tiegel nodded.
Lenneth planted her hands hard on her hips, “You both went through the test course?”
Tiegel and Jet nodded. “You didn’t?” Tiegel replied.
“Of course not. Why the hell would anybody want to?”
Jet and Tiegel shared an aside glance. “Boredom?” both cyborgs suggested to each other in unison. Seemed like the obvious answer to them.
Lenneth rolled her eyes and set about clearing up the mess on the floor, grumbling to herself about strange colleagues and their weird ideas. Who in their right mind would take on potentially those lethal test chambers solely for shits and giggles?
“Hey Jet!” a voice called down the length of the ship.
“Shuttup,” someone grumbled in one of the cabin.
“What?” Jet yelled back.
“Message. From the Insertion team,”
A blonde head appeared through some drawn curtains. “I’m trying to sleep!”
Jet ran past her trailing a soothing draft and the wafting smell of Meals Rejected by Erisians. Jet rushed to the bridge, passing through the engine room on her way. Andrew Maion, the only person in Fenspace who could understand the Nova’s engines, was sleeping happily under one of the big gas generator turbines. Jet’s slamming footfalls jolted him awake.
“Too hot,” he mumbled and rolled over onto a cooler patch of metal. Linda was down in the battery room, still humming that odd tune of hers.
The cargo bay door was sealed, while the bay itself was purposely left depressurised. Aside from mealtimes, most of the Kunstler were staying in vacuum... it saved air loss through continuous depressurisation. A sign on the door advised against going in alone, coupled with a Ghostbusters logo.
Getting up the ladder to the top deck hadn’t stopped being a pain. Still, it was easy enough if she just pulled herself up with her hands, propelling herself up onto the deck with one last push.
“Just came in,” Mari said, taking her rightful position at the pilots seat. Jet may have been the mission commander, but she was the ship’s Captain. “It’s on the comms panel,”
“Thanks,”
It took Jet just a few moments to read the message. Short, but exactly what she wanted to her.
Both on Rock. Confirm Vidkun. Possible Bob Rife. Vidkun may trust. Teela safe. Retrieve QED tomorrow. Get car ready for hookup. Laters
Mari swore she saw a weight drop off of Jets shoulders. “They made it,” she said. Ford was okay.
“So, we’re finally getting off this rock sometime soon?” Mari asked.
“Couple days maybe,” Jet responded. “Next SMS will be them leaving, then we’re going in,”
“Great,” Mari sighed, flopping back against the console. She gazed out over the hull to the metallic rock beyond. “I’ve had enough of this view already.”
She was still staring at the rock outside when Jet went below decks. Jet herself dropped down to the third deck, both feet clanging hard onto the deckplates. The lower deck was far more cramped. Linda was busy in the battery room behind her, while Jet made her way forward through the life support generators.
Frost was forming on the stored air tanks. Some bedding had been clustered around them. Miranda was cooling herself in nothing more than a tank-top and shorts, face buried in a book... as usual.
Heart of Darkness, Jet noted. Odd... most of the Senshi crew had a thing for Stephen King. Both of them mumbled a greeting as Jet went by.
The computer room was where Luka usually hung out... He wasn’t there, but the dinosaurs were. Everything was shut right down to cut heat output. Desmond’s rack was specially marked with a single piece of notepaper.
On it, a sketch of the Destiny Nova exploding, and the words ‘Please don’t forget!!’. The rack had its own onboard batteries allowing Des’ enough time to do an emergency hibernate, and was secured in place by a single catch. The intention was to make it easy for Luka to pull him out, and escape in Little Nelly, usually stored in the forward shuttlebay.
A Zig fighter could just about fit in there. A Skoda Estate would also fit, if you didn’t mind not being able to get anything else in, nor wanted to close the inner airlock doors. Most of the equipment and survival suits had been dumped in what was usually the emergency control room.
When Jet came into the forward shuttlebay where the Stargazer had been parked, the ship was totally dark. The air inside was still normal, just the temperature had been raised by some waste heat from the small spacecraft. There was some condensation on the inside of the windows.
Jet knocked gently on the roof.
The screen projector activated, showing Cortana avatar sitting in front of a virtual TV screen with a gamepad in hand and playing a match of Team Fortress 2. She was getting sick of being stabbed in the back by the spy.
“Hi Jet, nice to see you again” Cortana greeted him with a smile, “I hope nothing bad has happened? So what can I do for you ?”
“Got a message from Ford and Cathy.” Jet told her with a relieved cheerfullness. “They’re on Nehallennia. They’ll have the QED set up tomorrow probably.”
“I have the QED link to Hedwig set up. Enough bandwidth for games.” the avatar informed her. “I have been losing on TF2” She sounded annoyed.
Jets smile grew oddly mischievous. That’d be Desmond’s little hobby then. “Good. have task force [whatevername] come up to hot standby. We might need to be going on short notice anytime over the next 3 days.”
Jet found her cheer dissolving. She hoped they wouldn’t have to go that quickly. The only reasons she could think of that would have them going on such short notice, weren’t good reasons.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
“[whatevername] responds affirmative, ready in three hours.”
“Right so,” Jet said, her voice soft. Her thoughts had already gone elsewhere.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?