The black sea of space, the possibilities of technology and magic combined
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Lei, now that we all have as much molybdenum as we could ever need, how about you take the far reaches of the Wedge and we move our northern border tengward by 5 klicks?

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No. Just on principle.

 

Did someone not follow the best practices for earthquake-proofing? Again?

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People of Ansaf: we invite you all to work with us to recover the crashed alien ship. It will be a glorious expedition, striding deeper into the drydark than ever before. Set aside your arguments and take up this work of which legends will be made!

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When a kitsune teleports, do they take their temperature with them or shed it?

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Kef has a lot of sway right now and can immediately hire a kitsune to test that. And a liefling to tend to the kitsune's health. And one of every other available species, just in case.

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Brrrrrrrrr ow ow ow why does warming up hurt more than being cold

Kitsune carry their temperature with them.

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Excellent! Either way would have been excellent, actually, but now he can start designing a protocol to use kitsune to transfer heat to the expedition!

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Uh, Fuzzer? I think you're missing something obvious. Like, really obvious.

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Until we test it, we won't know if this is better than just using catfire.

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Uh huh.

Want to bet?

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No, you're right. This time.

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Oh good, so you can stop torturing the poor kitsune now.

What do you think of this method for making an enclosed tube - not a tunnel, above the surface. It doesn't have to be strong, right, it just has to contain air and be fast to build. And then the expedition can get food supplies by equartier.

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She could have left whenever she wanted!

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Dear sister, an elph must go to support this endeavor, but never fear, I will take on the risk, even should I perish in the lonely void.

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If you must, dear brother. If the shrine of Kef is your last, it will stand forever a testament to your bravery.

(Good. She needs to protect the Kef experiment.)

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Meanwhile, the survivors of the crash find themselves on a frigid glacier, with their pods floating in water that was melted by the impact and is rapidly refreezing.

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In the final seconds before impact, all the stasis pods, all the cargo pods, all the colonization modules were frantically launched with new descent programming.

The automatic landing systems universally failed.

So Exodus AI initiated emergency override, and took manual control of the thrusters in each pod. The pods, smaller and flying separate from Exodus's main hull, mostly landed easily... Mostly. The final act before impact was to trigger emergency re-awakening for all colonists, an abbreviated process that would leave them feeling groggy and sick, but awake enough to respond to the crisis.

The main hull hits first, all the modules floating lightly over it, scattered like dandelion seeds. It ploughs a long streak into the ice, sending shattered debris up in great showers, some of it impacting descending pods... It was never designed for such rigors. The impact is a hundred times beyond even the worst 'rough landing'. As the massive hulk grinds against the ice at hundreds of miles an hour, it rapidly disintegrates into so much aluminum, titanium, steel, circuitry, and wiring. The resulting debris field is a long oval as pieces fly up or are buried under hills of loose broken ice, and only small sections remain recognizable and intact. The Brigman Cores, in particular, were built tougher than anything else. They bubble and ooze hot blue plasma where they landed, each one melting the ice further with the energies inside, steadily melting small craters into the landscape.

The major modules, exposed on the outer hull, were disadvantaged in their landing. Several of the landing thrusters failed, sending the vital modules tumbling or hitting the ground at high speed, turning billions of dollars worth of high-end equipment into so much scrap. Others, outer hulls still glowing red-hot from re-entry, sank deep into the glacier as the ice greedily absorbed the violent energy of the descent, sinking into melting puddles of oily polluted steam and contaminated water. The pods are supposedly well sealed against anything that could threaten them, but the crash landing is a brutal test of engineering safeguards. 

Around half of them landed intact, on flat ground, if embedded in anywhere up to a dozen feet of ice once it refreezes. Some landed hard but not devastatingly hard, or at a steep angle or near a cliff or crevasse, subsequently falling and ruining whatever was inside. Some of them successfully completed their transformation into part of the debris field.

The smaller modules, the suspension pods, the medical module, the labs, the supply lockers and battery banks and shuttle bays, tended to deal better with the ice. They were deep in the hull, sheltered from the heat of re-entry, and less violent in their descent. The landing engines mostly produced large steaming puddles rather than melting away whole lakes, leaving them dug a foot or two into the ice in most cases.

 

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Shen wakes up to a scene of smoke and devastation. This pod should contain the whole bridge crew, but... He only sees two others moving around.

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"Damn it! This smoke-"

She starts coughing violently.

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"There's an electrical fire over here! Grab the extinguishers before it spreads!"

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They drill emergency procedures into you vigorously, when you're learning to be a pilot for humanity's first extraterrestrial colony. He knows exactly where the fire extinguishers are without having to think about it, and navigates to them through the smoke. The air is soon full of the sound of foam sprayers.

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Meanwhile, Lucy has looked at the external sensors, seen that it's a human-safe atmosphere if very cold, and cycled open the external vents. Good think the wires for that are exposed for a quick manual override, ugh...

The smoke starts to clear. She helps with the fires. She can see out the window now- What she sees is... Darkness. Frost riming it, and then... A large field of ice covered in smoking debris, as well as quite a few relatively intact pods and modules. The scene is lit only by fires and the exterior emergency lights, sullen red, of all the dropped pods.

"Fuck! What the hell happened here? Did we crash-land on Avalon's pole...?"

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"Let's put on our EVA suits. And close the vents again. We won't last long in these temperatures- And we need to start talking to people on the radios."

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"No, we should check on the rest of the bridge crew now that the fire's dealt with-"

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