“Sure thing Captain.” Ivy responds across the radio. “I am getting a heat signal in engineering. Otherwise not much has changed. Everything’s shiny Captain. Find anything yet?”

"Just a whole lot o' questions, Ivy-girl," Wyatt replies. "That life sign we detected ain't been identified yet. Seems t' be locked away in a suitcase. Doc and Pops 're working that li'l problem. Keep yer eye afield an' let me know the instant you see anything off."

The slow roll through the deck's rooms is tense. Wyatt doesn't really know what he is expecting but he sure as hell is expecting something. Accompanied by Alex and Fox, he approaches each room as though it is rigged to blow and there's a Big Damn Ugly Bad Thing in there waiting for them. 

Entering the workshop and a storage room, he observes the lathe, a 3d printer, and several other pieces of crafting equipment. What really catches his steel eyes are four EVA suits with eight full cylinders of air. One EVA suit is bulky enough so carrying these four along with them is out of the question but the captain feels a little less like this whole thing is a bust providing that they can take the suits with them. There's a li'l extra cash for our troubles, he thinks as the three make their way back out of the shop and to the next room.

The bathroom is of little interest. There's nothing even remotely interesting to the captain. Moving on to the crew quarters, he lets Alex and Fox know that they don't have time right now to dig through all of the lockers. The stuffed animal is curious. Wyatt can't see that being present unless there was a child on board and that just doesn't fit with what he knows of the Demeter. Unless, he muses, that's what's in the case. The rucksack is another anomaly. 

"Hard drugs, wooden stakes and a mallet," Wyatt states out loud even though Alex and Fox are both seeing what he is. "It's like I'm lookin' at props from some horror holovid. Any ideas why someone would want t' pack these around?"

(OOC: responses...)

The litterbox causes Wyatt to consider the possibility that the case contains a cat. But why go through all that trouble fer a cat?

"Wyatt..we seem to got this thingy stable for the moment. Gonna see if Doc wants to try jump a little power to anything else before we figure how to move this box out of here."

Keying his radio, Wyatt replies, "That's good news. There are four EVA suits in the shop at the bow o' the ship 'case ya need 'em. Doc, we've also found some Dreamdoze in the barracks. Keep us informed of yer progress."

Entering the Mess Hall, Wyatt takes in the appearance of the party with an unamused gaze. What'd they have t' celebrate? What happened t' end that celebration?

Skipping the generator room, Wyatt leads his team to Systems 2. Stepping inside, the familiar hum of electricity coursing through the ship interrupts the silence. 

"Wolf's having some success, I see," Sung declares, his eyes immediately going to the computers. "Seems we're in the right spot t' maybe get some answers to some questions. When Fenris gets life support back on, I imagine those bodies'll be a little less acceptable. Be ready fer that."

Keying his radio, Wyatt asks Wolf, "How long 'til we can rifle through the computer's logs?"

(OOC: response...)

"Good job down there," Sung ends their conversation and turns to Fox and Alex. "One deck cleared, time t' move t' another."

(OOC: I think that means moving back to the deck we first entered on, right?)

As Fenris moved from system to system giving the ship more life giving power he caught an energy dial he had not noticed before. Moving over to check it out he could tell right away it was the powering up of the Ion Cannon Alex had first spotted when making thier first pass of the Demeter.

The big mechanic moving to another console he found the naval weapons schismatics.

Run-tse duh FWO-tzoo*. if we could get this back to Destiny and installed we could better defend her..

Looking closer, almost drooling, Fenris saw it could be done but they’d have to get her to a shipyard with major tools, some docker workers and techs, and go from there. There was no way Fenris could remove it here and the more Fenris studied it the more he knew it was a pipe dream. The moment they showed up in this ship in any shipyard equipt to transfer the cannon from Demeter to Destiny and install it they would have all kinds of people, not just the Alliance, down on their heads.

"How long 'til we can rifle through the computer's logs?"

Wyatt’s voice in his ear broke him out of his thoughts of turning Destiny into a gunship and back to the present.

“Cap’n its gonna be around 30 minutes or so for full computers, Gravity will be back in 15, life support has already started, as I’m sure you all may have noticed. I’m still gonna need at least an hour before the ship warms up and the ship pressurizes. Cap’n one more thing, the ship's Ion cannon is powering up by itself and its taking a go tsao duh** amount of power from the rest of the ship. It’s hardwired into the system and it seems to take priority, except for life support and gravity, as far as what gets powered up first”

*Merciful buddha.
**Dog Humped

As Alaxis started the revival process for the box she attempted to peer inside. Frowning as that plan failed she looked around the bay to see what could be used for their own benefit. Seeing a machine she grins as she moves towards it taking a moment to get Jonah's attention, 

"Xray machine could see who.. or what.. .is in the box Jonah.." she paused as she eyes the machine looking it over silently for a moment, "It could work ... if we could get it over to the box.." 

"Xray machine could see who.. or what.. .is in the box Jonah.." Alaxis paused as she eyes the machine looking it over silently for a moment, "It could work ... if we could get it over to the box.." 

Pops looked the machine and then to the power meter now measuring the battery he had patched into the life support pumping through the box.

"I guess we might get one chance with that. It could draw heavy on the power supply and we could be right back where we were when we got here...but Im game."

Jonah opened the panel to expose the power leads. Testing the curcuits he rigged up a connect to match the power requirement. It would be bad to get that wrong and blow both the machine and the power supply. Using some wire he had from battery patch he connected them to the leads and then to the power supply.

"There you go Doc...set'r up right the first time." Jonah stepped back and let Alaxis do her doctor thing.

Alex went around the rest of the ship with the others.  It was meant to be a quick search so he moved quickly.  The stuffed animal was odd.  And the anti-vampire kit was even odder.  As they moved he contented himself with looking quickly for anything that provided information on the crew.  He looked for name plates on doors, labels on luggage, Paper of any sort if it existed.  Pill bottles.  Space suits with names.  Anything he could quickly glance at before moving to the next room.  

When the search was over he headed back to the infirmary.  Having remembered the battery he brought with he wanted to get  access to the logs.  Back in the infirmary he looked at the groups medic who was still working on the suitcase.  "If you need it, I have a battery.  I want to check the logs, find out what happened.  But if you need power for that thing you can take it.  I'd hate to have whatever is in there to die.  But give me warning.  I don't want to end up deleting anything.

(Assuming she can use ship power and doesn't need the battery..."

Alex sat down and tried to hook up the battery to power up one of the logs in the infirmary.  He'd start with infirmary logs  - where there were stiffs there should be medical logs.  And that wouldn't take much digging.  After that it would be all about accessing data from the bridge.  What had happened?   Names, dates, log entries, damage reports, flight plans, scanner readings, messages sent and received.   Whatever he could find.  Somehow it felt like time was critical.  It shouldn't be, here in the middle of nowhere, but it felt that way.  

OOC: I am making a couple of assumptions. One is that Gravity would not be flipping a switch on or off, but gradually re-established. The second is you are not taking off your EVA Suits until the ship is at least mostly pressurized. I am also gonna assume you will keep going from room to room until you reach the bridge.

Demeter Day 3, 11:30 pm Ship Time (ST) – Time spent on Demeter: 4.0 hrs

Power began to return to the ship and the familiar hums of a ship once more filled this now floating coffin. The air would take a while to fill the ship and the heat to reach the bulkhead, but the familiar pull of gravity began to pull on the team in Demeter. The gravity did not come on strong, it started slowly as the gravity bubble grew and established itself around the boat. One tenth G at first and then slowly upwards. So that items and dead bodies would fall slowly and gradually. No one wanted to clean up a broken thawing body from the deck.

Deck to Deck Search

Notes from Previous Search: The Teddy Bear was in the Engineers (Holmwood) room. The Stakes, mallets and dreamdoze was in the captain’s quarters (Harker). The catbox was in the doctor’s (Seward) quarters.

Room Search from the Lift. (Please note that by the time you finish the search, gravity will be on full on the ship will be mostly pressurized.

Weapons Control Room

This room contains a monitoring station for the main cannon mounted in the forward fuselage.

Storage (the dented door)

Steel storage crates house small arms and other equipment including survival packs, environmental

suits, food stores and medical supplies. What is really really strange is that the object that dented the door is a coffin. A real hard wood coffin. The lid is closed but there is lots of that silver paint all through this room. There are a few pieces of metal on the ground as well that look like platinum ingots but they are not platinum but a grey metal with some of the silver paint still on it.

(I am going to assume you open the coffin) The coffin is filled with bars upon bars on the same grey metal with silver paint. The pieces beneath are fully painted silver and look like platinum ingots. The padding in the lid of the coffin has been torn, showing a mechanism that held something pressurized in it. An examination of the device shows it was designed to activate on a timer after the lid was open for the first time.

Hallway

Halfway down the corridor is a dead body. Uniform is marked with “Quincy Morris”. He has a vicious looking wound on his throat that looks like he was bitten by something.

Environmental Control

All air and water/waste recycling is processed through this room. Most maintenance of these units can be done via this area, but some repairs require access from the exterior of the ship. Another dead crewmember is here, a woman with the label “Mina Murray”. She also has a neck wound and several bite marks on her arm.

Ion Energy Cannon Generator

This room is where the Ion Cannon gathers its energy to be fired. It is humming loudly

 Main Sensor Access

Access to Deck 3 is via a hatch in the floor of the room. Sensor power is regulated and routed through this room to the deck below. As this ship was originally a science exploration vessel, it has a powerful set of sensors.

(assuming you will go down the ladder to the 3 level)

 DECK 3

Sensors/Communications

All accessible equipment for sensor and communication control is in this room. Modifications and reprogramming can only be done from this location as these functions are not able to be modified from the bridge. 

Sensors/Communications

Monitoring stations for the main sensor array along with the four wave generators that are the heart of the ship’s massive sensor package is located here. A ladder leads upward to a hatch leading to room 2c on Deck 2. There are three dead alliance officers here (two men, on woman), tied up at the bottom of the ladder. Their uniforms are from the unification war. None of them have bite marks and their uniforms labels read, Stoker, Shelley and Stevenson.

Bridge

The bridge contains three massive view screens along the forward wall and two sides, three computerStations along the rear of the room, and a dropped station area for the four crew on duty at all times. A Captain’s chair sits on a pedestal in the center of the room.

In the captain’s chair is man’s body, strapped in with the full harness locked and with a thick blanket wrapped around him. In his right hand, trapped in a frozen grip, is an independence’s gun. On the side arm of the chair, is a note taped with duct tape, folded and labeled “To Lily”

On the floor of the bridge, about 6 feet away from the Captain is another dead crewmember. Her label says “Lucy Westena” and she was shot through the head, most likely before she was frozen. She does not have any bite marks that you can see.

Meanwhile in Engineering

Fenris watched the power flow, check the meters and worked the mechanical magic that he was good at to get the engines going and bring life back to the ship. The ship had plenty of fuel and he had no doubt that the engines had been shut off deliberately by the mechanic of Demeter. But why?  If they wanted to scuttle the ship, all they had to do was overload the Ion cannon generator. Why die in the cold of space? And why not use the lifepods or EVA suits that they had?

 Meanwhile in the Infirmary

Jonah and Alaxis worked on setting up the portable imaging machine. It was a high tech machine and the doctor could not but hope they would be able to liberate it for her use on Destiny. The battery was replaced and the machine hummed to life.

Alaxis quickly got an answer to what it was inside the case. It was a cat. A female cat, in a completely homemade stasis chamber inside the suitcase.

Alex was fiddling with the computers and the logs in the infirmary. As power was restored and life support was coming back on line, he was able to get the log application up. There was a brief surge and then a short, as power cables once frozen had too much energy go through them. Sparks fly and sputtered. Suddenly, the image of a man was on screen, an older man in a white lab coat. It is the Doctor from the ship. His eyes were a bit wild and he looked ragged and resigned. He is speaking by there is no audio. According to the menu, there are two files on the log that are not encrypted, marked as to be read.

A feminine voice intoned across the speakers: “Life support restored to breathable limits:” and then repeated the same in Cantonese.

The sweep of the ship: 

Entering the Weapons Control Room Wyatt considers their discoveries thus far. The stakes and mallets are certainly weird 'nough. Why're these names ringin' a bell in my brainpan? Harker... it's all on the tip o' my tongue but... Proceeding carefully through his check, the captain decides to put more minds to the riddle. 

"Either o' you have any inclin' of some memory containin' things 'bout this ship? Names an' such?"

(OOC: answers/convo as it happens)

"Wolf," Wyatt breaks radio. "There's a weapons control room here. When you got everythin' settled in Engineerin', come on up here an' see what we can do t' get this weapon online. We might be able t' get more off this ship than some boxed goods if'n we can find a way t' get 'er to a shipyard."

The exploration team moves on, stepping cautiously into the storage room through the dented door. Gravity is beginning to kick in. The EV suits feel heavier. Stormy eyes survey the mess before moving in to investigate more directly. It isn't the Steel storage crates and other equipment including survival packs, environmental suits, food stores, and medical supplies that catch his eye. What does is what appears to be the object that dented the door: a coffin—A real hard-wood coffin. The lid is closed but there is lots of that silver paint all through this room. There are a few pieces of metal on the ground as well that appear to be platinum ingots but, after closer inspection, are not platinum. They are a grey metal with some of the silver paint still on it.

Grimly rising from his crouched inspection, feeling like the whole treasure rumor was just a ruse, Wyatt approaches the coffin and spares a glance at his companions to register any objections before opening it. The coffin is filled with bars upon bars on the same grey metal with silver paint. The pieces beneath are fully painted silver and look like platinum ingots. The padding in the lid of the coffin has been torn, showing a mechanism that held something pressurized in it. An examination of the device shows it was designed to activate on a timer after the lid was open for the first time.

"Well... I'm beginnin' t' have my doubts 'bout the credibility o' them rumors," Sung mutters, eyeballing the painted bars. Taking a deep breath of his canned air, the captain resists the urge to shake his head in disappointment and sweeps his hand across the stores of additional goods. "At least these things might be worth somethin'.

"Let's move on," he turns and heads for the damaged door keying his mic. "Note, we got some potential in the storage room. Also, looks like they might've been lyin' 'bout the platinum on board Demeter. That silver stuff we've been seein' floatin' 'round looks like paint used t' disguise cargo as platinum."

Moving further down the hallway, the group comes across a dead body. The uniform is marked with “Quincy Morris.” He has a vicious looking wound on his throat that looks like he was bitten by something.

"Got another floater," Wyatt frowns as he relays the information across their comms. "Only..." he steps up and turns the body so he can better examine the wound. "... looks like he was attacked by somethin'. His throat is torn out.

"Doc, this ain't a knife wound. Some kind of animal near as I can tell."

(OOC: whatever convo happens...)

Cautiously moving on to the Environmental Control room, Wyatt immediately notes the dead woman. The dead crewmember is a woman with the label “Mina Murray”. She also has a neck wound and several bite marks on her arm. 

"Doc, got another abused body. This one's in the Environmental Control room an' if I were a bettin' man, I'd say these are defensive wounds on her arm. The neck wound looks 'bout the same. Want us t' bring these back t' the medbay?"

(OOC: Answers, Discussion)

Motioning his team to move on, Wyatt leads them into the Ion Energy Cannon Generator room where the Ion Cannon gathers its energy to be fired. It is humming loudly.

"Wolf, Pops, this energy cannon generator seems t' be workin'. I don't think we're gonna stick around here much longer."

Leaving the generator room, Wyatt leads the team into the Main Sensor Access chamber. Sensor power is regulated and routed through this room to the deck below. As this ship was originally a science exploration vessel, it has a powerful set of sensors. Moving to the controls, Wyatt performs a cursory assessment against any visible wear and tear. 

"Fox, you think you an' Pops can relay Demeter's sensor readings and controls through t' Destiny? I don't reckon we've enough time t' install these components or arrays on our girl so that's the next best thing."

(OOC: Conversation/replies)

With the sensor room surveyed, Wyatt takes the lead to Deck 3 through the hatch in the floor and into the Sensors/Communications chamber. All accessible equipment for sensor and communication control is in this room. Modifications and reprogramming can only be done from this location as these functions are not able to be modified from the bridge. The room appears to have experienced little of what the rest of the ship has undergone and Captain Sung moves his crew to the next chamber in short order.

Monitoring stations for the main sensor array along with the four wave generators that are the heart of the ship’s massive sensor package is located here. A ladder leads upward to a hatch leading to room 2c on Deck 2. There are three dead alliance officers here (two men, one woman), tied up at the bottom of the ladder. Their uniforms are from the unification war. None of them have bite marks and their uniforms labels read, Stoker, Shelley, and Stevenson.

Stoker... Shelley... Harker... Where've I heard these names before? "Got three dead Alliance. Looks like they was prisoners. Still in uniform, still bound." Quickly examining them, he confirms, "None of these have any wounds. They likely died suffocating or when the ship was depressurized." Keeping his own feelings about the Alliance getting what they deserved, Wyatt moved on to the Bridge. 

The bridge contains three massive view screens along the forward wall and two sides, three computer stations along the rear of the room, and a dropped station area for the four crew on duty at all times. A Captain’s chair sits on a pedestal in the center of the room. In the captain’s chair is man’s body, strapped in with the full harness locked and with a thick blanket wrapped around him. In his right hand, trapped in a frozen grip, is an independent's gun. On the side arm of the chair, is a note taped with duct tape, folded and labeled “To Lily.”

"Well, hello Captain," Wyatt declares solemly before looking down at the other body, gravity in full effect now. 

On the floor of the bridge, about 6 feet away from the Captain is another dead crewmember. Her label says “Lucy Westena” and she was shot through the head, most likely before she was frozen. She does not have any bite marks that you can see.

Taking the handgun between two fingers, Wyatt lifts the gun, hand, and arm to look the weapon over. "I'm easy t' make the observation that the cap'n shot her dead, but why?" Replacing the arm with the weapon back on the rest, Wyatt tears free the note and carefully opens it up so not to tear it. After reading it, he passes the note to his companions. When they've finished reading it, he folds it back up and places it in one of the EV suit's pockets.

Just then, a feminine voice intones across the speakers: “Life support restored to breathable limits:” and then repeats the same in Cantonese.

"Keep yer suits on and sealed for the moment, folks," Wyatt orders. "Doc, can you run a diagnostic scan on the air in this bird? I don't want t' be surprised by no contagion. How's the rest of you doin'? Report in. That includes you Ivy-girl."

Wyatt’s voice in his ear broke him out of his thoughts of turning Destiny into a gunship and back to the present.

“Cap’n its gonna be around 30 minutes or so for computers, Gravity will be back in 15, life support has already started, as I’m sure you all may have noticed. I’m still gonna need at least an hour before the ship warms up and the ship pressurizes.”

Pausing to catch his breath and to figure how to word the next part of his report.

“Ahhh Cap’n one more thing, the ship has an Ion cannon that's powering up by itself and its taking a go tsao duh amount of power from the rest of the ship. It’s hardwired into the system and seems in a way to take priority as far as what gets powered up first”

“Well Wolf there's a weapons control room here. When you got everythin' settled in Engineerin', come on up here an' see what we can do t' get this weapon online. We might be able t' get more off this ship than some boxed goods if'n we can find a way t' get 'er to a shipyard."

“Cap’n like I said, the gun is already powering up so getting it online will be no sweat. On my way there now.”

A last quick look over of engineering and the big mechanic was headed to the Ion cannon's weapon control room as Wyatt had ordered. Moving quickly Fenris arrived, seeing Pop’s already in the room he moved to the control stand.

“Anything I need to know Pop’s before I turn this lady on?……………...

(I’m assuming Pop’s is already in the room if not disregard my above question.)

As Alex watched the medical officer silently speak on the screen in front of him he couldn't help but think, "well, you wanted a mystery and you seem to have one."  Sometimes getting what you asked for wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  Some animal attacked the crew?  Why?  And what?  That cat in stasis?  And the 3 . . . prisoners?  If the Demeter had stolen a load of platinum then having prisoners made sense.  So did the uniforms.  But . . . there was no platinum.  Just a version of fools gold. Maybe the crew believed they had stolen platinum?  But the legends cleary said that this ship had stolen a large load of platinum.  But they hadn't.  They had . . . rocks.  But usually when there is a theft it isn't just that somebody ends up with a load of stolen goods.  It also means that somebody else lost a load of the now stolen goods.  Which was interesting.  Because if, in fact, a load of platinum had disappeared . . . where had it gone?  It certainly hadn't ended up on this ship, despite the legends.  So where was it?  Who had walked out of the room a very rich man? 

It was enough to make him think.  And it made him want to get a better look at exactly what the "fools platinum" was made of. 

In the mean time he watched the man speak.  He looked wild.  He did his best to lip read, but it was hard.  There were two files marked to read.  It was as good as an invitation.  So, why not?  But first he tried to download and save anything there was - including those files.  (I don't know how this works in this time period - but the idea is that he is concerned that opening these files will cause a virus or something to destroy whatever is on the system.  He wants to back up the information first.)  And was there an audio file for this video clip? 

That done, he opened the "read me" files.

All the time he kept thinking about mallets, stakes, coffins and neck bites.  It was a shame they were on a spaceship and not in an ancient Earth castle. 

Alaxis glanced at the imagining screen in disbelief. She had hoped there was a human inside, someone she could potentially save.. or doom the entire crew with. Instead she moved closer to the screen as if trying to possibly sink into it as she peered at the image. 

Rubbing her face she sighs heavily then turns when her com activated, 

"Got another floater." A pause before, "Only..Doc, this ain't a knife wound. Some kind of animal near as I can tell." A sigh left her lips before she turned to reply using her own coms only to pause when hers crackled again, 

"Doc, got another abused body. This one's in the Environmental Control room an' if I were a bettin' man, I'd say these are defensive wounds on her arm. The neck wound looks 'bout the same. Want us t' bring these back t' the medbay?" Frowning she gazes at the box that apparently housed an animal and not a person before activating her own coms

"If it's possible and not too much of a problem, yes. I'd like to study them and find out exactly what happened." With that she continued to gaze at the screen. A murmured shocked revelation quickly caused her to realize that her com had shut off and so, reactivating it she replied to everyone, "A cat, they put a cat in this box.."