<< BACK TO RS001 LOG -------------- Ship : Lantashi Dance Log : 004 Date : 2496-10-20-10 Status : He Broke the Bloody Ship! -------------- /* TRANSMISSION START */ Sarah West's Report: #### Help! This is Sarah West. I am making this report with the permission of Captain Lantashi, though she didn't tell me what I had to say. She basically said, "You fixed it. Have fun!" I am an engineer on the exploration vessel Lantashi Dance. The ship is limping around in an unexplored section of space. The crew seems... unstable, having spent way too much time in statis. There is some strange entity on board that has now endangered all our lives! And we now have a moron who is put in charge of landing teams. More on that below. #### New Landing Team Lead Thane Biomax, yes that's his real name... he's cute. Very cute. From southern Missouri, he is tall, well over 2 meters, and strong as an ox, even after having spent eternity in stasis! But he shouldn't be put in charge of anything! He definitely should never touch anything electrical, mechanical, edible, or, well... he should just not do anything at all! #### What Happened Mr. Biomax cannot wire his way out of a paper-bag! What was he *thinking*?? He nearly killed us all with his bright idea of how to restore full power to the ship! "Oh, all I have to do is create a feedback loop in the fusion reactor, disable a few outdated safety protocols, power the ship, and feed the excess energy out into space!" I told him no! Yonas told him no! Bearth told him no! Even Captain Lantashi got out of her tree in The Garden and said it was a bad idea. Everyone told him no! But he claimed he got the idea from a sentient life-form that materialized to him, just *HIM* mind you, and gave him the schematics. And this... *thing*... appeared to him in the form of a cute blonde girl, and says she is a higher life form. It said its name was Rachel, which just happened to be the name of one of his college sweethearts. I'll "higher life-form" *her* if I ever get my hands on her. I tell you that. What Mr. Bio-NoBrain managed to do is fry the life-support systems, completely knocked out the fusion drive, sent our AI into pyscho-mode, brought down navigation, and blew a huge hole in the back of our ship. Oh, and knocked out the QEC system for *months*. #### Repairs We lost two crewmen from the blast. And it took the entire engineering staff three days, *THREE DAYS*, to get life support back online! We nearly all froze and sufficated to death while bringing life-support back online. Most of the garden perished, putting everyone on emergency rations for over a month until it recovered. And the fusion reactor is now being held together with duct tape and super-glue. (No, really, duct tape is involved) #### Back on Course The ship wandered off course, due to the strong solar winds in the nebula. It would not have been good for us to try to enter orbit anyways, or even the Kelev 01-072 system, when we couldn't "see" anything. Finally, the hull-breach is repaired the best it is going to be. I have half the ship systems wired up to a pair of Amigas. We passed 072, and had to slow down and circle back to it, all the while hoping our repairs held. #### Preparing to Land We've now entered orbit around 01-072.4, and the sensors, such as they are, seem to indicate plant-life similar to what is now growing in the garden. The planets in the area must be affected by the radiation of the nebula. Our ship is equipped with a small shuttle to land on planets. The ship itself supposedly can as well, but until we know exactly what is down there, that might be imprudent. And the person being put in charge of the landing team? Thane Biomax. Yonas wanted to throw him in the brig, but we don't have a brig. Yonas was dragging Biomax to the airlock for an early ship departure, but two things prevented that. First, Chief Security Officer Dothmer wanted to go with Thane, out the airlock, without a suit! What is up with that Elephant Man? I would have been happy to see them both spaced, but the Captain was having none of it. Captain Lantashi said that Thane showed "initiative"... that was her word. She said he had the qualities of a "leader". Uh huh. And I have been asked to go down to the planet surface with the team as well! "Keep the shuttle running, Sarah," Yonas said to me. "And keep an eye on wonder-boy." My only consolation is that he is going down on the planet with a red shirt. That should stand out, and if there are any monsters down there, maybe they'll go after him first. ~Sarah West, Engineer /* TRANSMISSION END */ -------------- Wiki System Missouri - Independent country in the middle of the north American continent. Used to be part of something called the "United States". Main exports - grains such as corn, and propusion systems for ship. Red Shirt - Rumor has it, from the 20th century, that red shirts are dangerous to wear on planet surfaces. But for some strange reason they were popular in the 20th-century, and causes a lot of people to die while exploring outer space. --------------