Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Port Nacelle - A Nacelle With A View
[snip]

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.

“That’s a lot of power in that thing,” Walters commented as he read the output. El found herself unconsciously chewing on a nail as she scanned that output.
“It is. We’re lucky it’s only a fusion like reactor,” El replied though with the drop of that implied a ‘for now’. “The Cochranes primarily power our weapons and shielding. We may have an edge there. I can’t imagine how fast that would be though.”

“How did it come to be there? How long?” Damien asked.

“Can we tell? Spectroscopics? Sensor readings?” El asked. “Hull composition comparison? Did it come from this world? This system?” Was it one of the planet’s ‘defenses’ that just came into play? Was it one of those ‘serpents’? She looked a the black triangular hull. Didn’t look like a snake. More like a triangular turtle .. er, with a huge power core.

“Checking,” Damien said, methodically tapping at the controls. It was something he could do. It was something that he’d not had to do for a while.

• El, Eng

The Bridge replied back to prepare. El muttered, “What did I just say? It’s not like we press the go button down here.

Walters asked, “Are we running away? I mean it’s big and has got a huge power plant but it’s not like it’s firing on us or seems to have weapons hot.”

“Damien,” El said. “Anything on sensors on a faster than light drive? Is it armed?” Then she pressed the comms again. [o] Ready when you are, bridge [c] Switching it off, El shrugged more to herself than anything. “Rosa, head back to monitoring the Cochranes. Ricky,” she said to Walters. “Keep an eye on power distribution systems. Things might get interesting. Damien, get Galen back here from wherever he’s hiding.” She flicked the switch back on. [o] Any readings on shielding or weapons or FTL drives on that? [c]

• El, Eng

Scans took a bit to process, the strange ‘something’ was indeed putting out a lot of energy in fact it was quite similar to the strange energy source that the landing party had just shut down. Though in this case on a far higher level. The hull composition was of an unknown type, but readings could discern it was quite strong in composition. Interestingly despite this seeming advanced strength the actual hull’s thickness was not much more than an inch or so! Why this was so was anyone’s guess. Scans for any life signs came up negative, as best as could be devised, the entire massive structure was one massive power source, with what seemed and equally complex communications and sensing array. Again for what purpose was anyone’s guess. But it was a pretty safe assumption this was NOT a construct by either of the major powers on the planet below. Nor was it of any known race’s construction methods.

Damien said, “Hull is tough, and thin. I don’t think that was constructed for interstellar travel. More like a big battery to power communications and sensors. But to talk to what?”
“Local?” she asked.
Damien shook his head. “No. Not them and not anything the computer recognizes. This is new. And no life signs. Maybe it’s just the mother of all buoys?”
El felt a thrill go through her. The planet below was alien but still had a familiarity to it that made her at home but not at home. This, however, was different. She squinted at the lights. She smacked Damien’s shoulder lightly. “Mother of all buoys. But pregnant with what?” She chewed a nail for a minute as she stared at it. “Communications you say. Sensors. Is it scanning us? And run those flashing lights through a translation algorithm. If it is computer controlled maybe it’s trying to chat mathematically. Is it transmitting ..” She waved her hand. “.. out there?” Or just trying to give her a headache.

As this all was taken in the strobing lights on the top and bottom of the structure were now an almost blinding blinking speed. But no signs of any type of power build up or known weapons were in evidence, so again what this meant was once more anyone’s guess!

GM CockRoach

Galen came into engineering; El heard his boots on the decking not to mention the way he whistled through his teeth. His whistling stopped as soon as he saw the screen. “Well that’s something you don’t see every day,” he said, emitting a short appreciative whistle as though to emphasize that. “Looks like some kind of ark waking up after space cleared.” He shrugged. El turned to him with a brow raised and arms crossing.
“How do you know that?”
“A sci-guy was all excited. Passed him in the corridor. Sayers. You know him? Little guy, real excitable. Said he was using macro-b’s on the planet looking out the window from his cabin and then it cleared up suddenly. Like mist burning off a lake he said.”

El looked at the thing. Unmanned. Not from here. She suddenly had a bad feeling. “Okay, here’s a what if. These Serpents are foiled by the Greyhound, one of our ships from out of our near future that somehow got back into the past. Our boys set up this kind of defense where ships can’t go faster than light but these Serpents send this thing .. big engines, unmanned, able to travel for a long time in that soup at high impulse to the planet to wait for the field to dissipate then it wakes up and sends out the signal that it’s all clear.” El knew there were holes in that as she could not jive that with the sudden appearance of the planet and field but neither could she quite put all the temporal pieces together yet.
The others turned toward her. “Sheesh, El, you really know how to cheer a girl up,” said Rosa from her station.
El, Eng