[snip]

El crawled along the tube thankful that she didn’t mind these spaces. The smell was different than engineering. There it was a mixture of smells but always a hint of the machine-ey there. Here it was almost rarified. Ozone like. With the air a feel of autumn. She’d first really felt that season in Britain. At first she liked it. The changes were something she had not really seen in her island paradise growing up. But when the cold started to hit the lustre had dimmed rapidly.

Reaching her destination El looked at the coil and the status display next to it which was mostly status indicators. She placed her scanner on the plate next to it where it magnetically affixed to it and made connection to it. More data scrolled over the small face that El took in. Everything was within operating parameters, showing green everywhere but for one yellow tick that suggested a small charge buildup. That was normal and occurred through regular operation and was usually dealt with in routine maintenance. It had been done at the last check, she noted. Maybe it was this area of space, or perhaps something leaked when they were hit by the plasma blasts from the orbiting platforms. It hadn’t done any damage to them but electronics were skitchy things.

[o] El to Engineering. Damien. I’m at the coil. What are you reading for negative charge buildup at the 12xB junction chips and coil? I’m getting a notice that it is higher than it should be [c] She set her comms on the decking and upped the speaker volume while she shifted to get more comfortable.
[o] Rosa here El. Damien’s coffee got too much for him. I’m reading a 12.8kw charge. That is up from the normal. Uh .. [c]
[o] 11 .. [c] El said helping her out. [o] Can you send a degauss command through with a PM notation on the log and we can see if it needs more work [c]
[o] Bringing that up now. So El, when are we going to get together. You said you’d teach me some choice words in Chinese and I’d do the same in Spanish? [c]

El, Eng

As El was working on the coil, out a small view port to her left, she could see the swirling gravitic anomalies that ebbed and flowed within the system and which as they knew roughly covered a vast 4 some light year radius. These eddies which not only disrupted long range comms, sensors, but also warp travel, making any effort to get from within this system to beyond the anomaly’s edge by impulse would take easily 100 some years or more. Something which in short was just not doable without turning the Bonaventure somehow into a multi-generational habitat.

As she watched the eddies weave and bob out the small 4 inch circular port she saw coming into view the edges of the blasted war torn planet below. The view in this case was mostly of the southern areas of the planet. Where the more hostile MACARM forces were arrayed. Looking at what she could see it seems the ESM had given as good as they could have considering the circumstances of the MACARM’s superior armaments and surprise attacks on them. Cities it was clear were burning, and vast swaths of land were on fire, smoking, or just irradiated hellscapes. Already too she could see signs of a deep nuclear winter coming across the planet, within months if not sooner the whole planet would be caked in its icy grip and no doubt the survivors on both sides would drop even further. In way she would probably reflect this was probably a lot like what Earth went through to some degree in the horrid years of World War 3. The question though was could like Earth this planet’s populace survive and pull itself out of it?

As these thoughts went through El’s mind something moved out in the strange darkness of the eddies to the planet’s northern poles. As the spin of the planet and orbital shift of the Bonaventure made this more evident she could see, yet not see......something, in the darkness. As she squinted there was a clear sign of small ripples along the northern pole of the planet, clearly signs of low level gravity waves affecting the planet’s own natural gravitational field. But if she wasn’t mistaken there seemed an odd effect of these same waves rippling up and almost around some unseen object. The effect though was so slight that maybe she was just seeing things, who could say.....

OOC: Adding in the addition of events happening from the planet!

As this all happened the ebbing and flow of the gravity anomalies in and around the planet and the vast system about them suddenly seemed to ebb out and cease! Within minutes the ripple effects and stirring gaseous around them (and later when they would check even the 4 light year radius that trapped them) was soon gone! They were free, but in turn the alien planet was still here and present.

More to the point though El could suddenly see that the strange ‘something’ in the darkness above the northern pole region seemed to shimmer then fade into view! Above the pole was a large deeply black diamond shaped object of some sort. At a rough eyeball guess it was about 50 meters high by 40 meters wide. As she watched at the top and bottom tips of the object two small white light sources begin to blink in a slow pulse effect, which as she further would watch over the next two minutes had steadily grown in speed.

GM CockRoach