<> < AU out from the primary. Epsilon Reticuli A is perhaps a little unstable, but it doesn't have a history of solar flares. All in all, the only thing that suggests this is not a milk run is that the Sleythin seem to think that spatial anomalies have/are/will have happenededing at some point in the past/future/present, which is noted in the Sleythinpedia mostly because it jacked with their measurements of the system.>> <> * Amadeus is in the map room, plotting a course! That's one of his jobs, after all. * Kyle is doing mechanical stuff! Mostly monitoring systems to make sure they keep running smoothly and don't, I dunno, suddenly age a stupid amount. <> * Hestia is reading up on gravitational anomalies. Why? Because sleythinpedia said there'd be some, and that's almost certainly why ATC bothered to hire them to chart an otherwise boring as hell planet. <> * Lexi is chilling in the lounge waiting to be told everyone is ready, and is, in the meantime, updating her status on whatever the ATC equivalent of Facebook or Twitter is. Maybe Spacebook? Her status is now "It is apparantly possible to be bored and chainjumping at the same time. Who knew?" * Kyle sighs and leans back, satisfied with the readouts, and starts watching some funny videos he downloaded from Spacetube. <> <> (...how long have you been waiting to say that.) (Maybe half a second?) * Zeke is on team Everything Else Is Covered, and so is also in the lounge, his drones spread out over the ship as per normal. <> * Kyle gives the signal to go! * Kyle laughs at the cat jumping inside of boxes. (SPACE boxes.) * Hestia sighs and slumps back on the couch in the lounge, tossing a datapad onto the coffee table or something thereabouts. "Well thank you, Interstellar Geographic," she mutters. "So all we know is that we don't really know anything and we could pop out of nullspace next an anomaly that drops us in a universe where we're all... sofas or something." (SOFA WARS: THE FALL OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE) * Lexi jumps up and heads to the cockpit. "Alright! Hold onto your seats... or weird tin suits, whatever you have." She starts the take off process. <> * Zeke looks over at Hestia. "That universe seems unlikely. As does a tin suit." Yeah, but one where we're all sundaes is much more probable. * Kyle thinks. "Hey, sundaes..." He gets some videos of cats eating sundaes. <> * Hestia looks at Zeke, then says levelly, "Hey, if you're bored, spend the trip to Planet Holes in Space skimming articles on figurative language." * Zeke's holoface frowns. "Sorry." A pause, then, "It seemed... amusing." <> * Hestia also frowns, but for different reasons. "Hey... that's not right." She tilts her head toward the cockpit and both speaks and comms at the same time. "What's up with the phlogiston?" (Once I remember what it is...) (And so, the Fate Breaker was sucked into a time vortex because nobody was watching the readouts and everyone died, the end.) (Awesome!) (unawesome) * Amadeus blinks at Tia's comm. "I don't know," he comms back, and starts watching more closely. <> * Amadeus says over the comms, "It looks like a storm, or something, and it's getting stronger the closer we get." <> <> * Lexi whistles. "Teach me to say I'm bored." * Tomas arrives in the lounge from bunkward, his hair slick as if he's just finished showering (because that's totally what he was doing), "What's all the ruckus?" * Lexi attempts to keep the ship as steady as possible. "Hey, smart guys! What the hell is going on!?" * Amadeus comms, "Phlogiston storm, that's all I know! Like the time we nearly went into the sun." * Lexi nods. "Alright. I'll keep an eye out for anvils." * Hestia stands up, then instantly regrets it considering, slamming her hands palm-down on the back of the couch to stay standing. "God damn ATC. It's got to be the anomalies." < cess.>> (Er. s/seem/sees/) "Um... Lexi, we've got a hurricane in front of us..." * Zeke looks at it and says, "This is highly dangerous. To what degree can we drop out of a jump?" <> (Then roll some dice and cross your fingers.) (Waiting for our pilot to notice the hurricane.) (Sorry. She was noticing a student who wants an excused absence for something stupid.) (*reads up*) (Did she set him on appropriate amounts of fire? (Sort of) * Lexi blinks. "Well... this sucks." (That's our Lexi! /extro) (Okay. So Cham: Chances of survival flying through this vs. dropping out?) <> * Lexi Lexi nods to the GM message in her head. "Right. Well hold on tight, guys! We're going for it!" And she continues to head to the Out interstice while doing her best to avoid the hurricane. <> <> (It's mind, right?) 2d6+12 * Dicesuke throws the bones for Lexi (2d6+12) and gets a natural 9 for a result of 21. (Oh wait! No it's average of Mind and Body. So 20) <> * Hestia thankfully has a feed to all this data from the comfort of her couch in the lounge. "...oh, you've GOT to be kidding me." Star charts! Sleythinpedia! Cross ref! * Lexi shakes her head. "Wow! Now THAT wasn't boring! Also... where are we?" (Wait! I thought this was going to be TNG not Voyager! Damnit! I'm on the wrong show!) * Amadeus blinks. "Whaaaat the-" he starts messing with the map and scanners, trying to figure out where they are. * Zeke looks at Team Already On It. "A very good question. <> * Amadeus relays that information to the rest of the team! (Sorry, I was caught AFK for a 'bit. I'm here now, though.) (So we overshot it by a few.) (That's not so bad.) Yo Prof, where are we? * Kyle checks to see if the ship's still in-tact. (I told you!) (In a /me because I didn't want to repeat exactly what Cham said.) * Hestia stands up and crosses her arms over her chest. It is notable that she's doing this all 'in her head' to outside observance. "Well, overshot's not bad, but I'm not going ten years plus on standard drive getting there, and taking the Drive back would be stupid as hell." <> (Oh, right. XD) We've got another jump like that, at least, in the ship. It's not liking it, but it can handle another jump. * Zeke nods. "Yes. We cannot get there without using the drive besides." I'm not talking about the ship. * Tomas peers out a porthole, "Is that hurricane a constant thing?" <> * Amadeus fiddles with the instruments a bit, then comms, "It's still there." * Zeke replies, "The scanners and forecast did not detect it before." "We can route around it, if we want." (I love how people are all confused about why it's there.) (Tia: "I wonder if the anomalies are doing it." Crew: "what anomalies." Tia: >:| ) (Hahahaha.) (XD) (Oh, Zeke isn't confused about 'why it's there'. But nothing did pick it up beforehand all the same.) (I'm not sure anybody's confused about why it's there.) <> * Hestia ducks down and snaps up her pad from the table, tapping at it idly. "I do too much theoretical physics on these jobs for a computer specialist." Is there anything useful still to be accomplished here? We can't very well investigate the planet with that thing sitting on top of it. "I've got nothing, really." * Hestia tap tappity. "We've got to see the things, or at least get in sensor range. I mean, it's not like we exhaustively know everything about the behavior of phlogiston, but something like that is very, very weird indeed." * Zeke looks around and says, "I do not see why we cannot make it to the planet, make sufficient repairs to leave, and complete the mission as given, if we have the structural integrity to make the jump." * Hestia tilts her head. "I think he's saying not to waste what might be our last jump ever going to the planet in the middle of the massive phlogiston storm that borked the ship in the first place." * Tomas rolls his eyes toward the cockpit, "We just have to hope Lexi is sober enough to land that close." * Lexi looks back. "I haven't had anything to drink all day... and I'm really starting to regret it." You can drink after we land. (AFK a sec, sorry.) <> But yeah. I don't know if it's gonna last another jump. There was some serious fatigue on the ship last time we jumped. * Lexi shrugs. "So what do you guys want me to do?" Also, we tried to hit the planet before. That was an accurate jump. The field's gonna screw any jumping we do up pretty badly. Is there no method of compensation? "Who knows?" Ya got me. * Zeke frowns and shakes his head, before trundling over to the astronav stuff. "We will have to find a method of compensation to get there. I will help." (I have navigation and piloting too!) (Good job! How will that stop the ship from exploding?) (One problem at a time!) (I'm only one man.) * Kyle looks for any way to reinforce the bulkheads, or at least keep the stress from ripping anything apart. Although it's entirely possible he doesn't have anything on-hand that can handle it. <> * Kyle goes to help with that! <> * Zeke's drones come out of the woodwork to help Kyle reinforce. It's like a party! (So, we'll need to use the deflector dish?) (Bounce a gravaton particle beam off the main deflector dish.) <> (Ah, gather more data.) (Gathering more data is sweet.) (Couldn't we use the 'emergency probe' to gather data too?) (Save us a trip.) (How would you know where it wound up to collect it?) (Keep in mind that these things'll be lightyears away.) (True enough.) (I guess guess and test is it until we succeed at figuring it out. Fun times!) * Zeke finally says, "We don't have enough data to compensate. More attempted jumps will be required." (How well can I reinforce the ship? I'm assuming we can't make too many jumps otherwise we'd always have the ship reinforced.) <> (back) * Kyle sighs. "Hey, yeah. That's a great plan." Except we won't take another jump like that anyways. * Zeke looks up at Kyle's comment. "You are certain? Then we have little immediate recourse." * Kyle is talking over the coms. "We can do normal jumps, that's fine. But the ship'll come apart at the seams if you pull that trick any harder." * Hestia smirks a little. "Well, there's a third option." Fly right into the hurricane and skip over to that alternate dimension where we're all sofas. * Hestia turns to Zeke. "Except you. You're probably a workbench of some sort." Hit the Eye of the Storm? ("And Lexi is probably a mattress." "...") "Let's not do that. That sounds completely insane." As crazy as we usually are, I'm with the Prof on this one. Oh, it'd pretty much be suicide, but I figured I'd throw it out there. * Zeke nods slowly, then says, "It seems unlikely. Can we get better readings on the anomolies themselves than the Sleythin data had? With them as the cause, perhaps that will help." <> (Well yes.) <> (I think we're still in gather data mode, because once all that's done, we kinda just have to go home and mull.) (We clearly can't jump through that again.) (Unless I'm missing something. We've got anomolies causing a nullspace hurricane.) (Yeah. I'd like a closer look but not if it's going to reduce the ship to a tandem bike in the process.) (Think we need to go home from here.) (WE could probably try and go around?) (Oh god, we're on Voyager.) <> <> Well, I don't know WHAT to think of all that. If we're gonna pull that again, I'm gonna need to do some work on the ship. * Zeke nods slightly. "And on what could possibly have that effect." <> <>