Chapter 8: Phaon

(Since both Jessine and Thorn elected to grab the lightsabre, an initiative roll has given it to Thorn.)

The first thing that Raymont noticed as he grabbed the black rung of the ladder was how cold it was. He thought it was plastic, but it wasn't. It was metal and the coldness of it bit into his hand like it was made of space ice. His legs were numb too, from having waded through the icy stream. It wouldn't do to catch an illness out here, he thought. No handy doctors or medroids in the wilderness. Certainly the air inside the dam was humid enough.
"Hurry up, or we'll catch our death out here," Jessine growled at him.
He looked at her. "Funny," he said, "I was just thinking the same thing."
Raymont lowered himself down the ladder, descending down the walls of the dam into the earth of Phaon. Behind him came Jessine, then Solo and finally Grange. Thorn, Leon and Bug remained behind. The party descended into the hole. The farther down they got, the colder it got. Solo was sure his legs were frozen blocks. Next time, he decided, they would bring along that portable heater.
"Did Onzlo mention anything about bad air?" Raymont could hear Joe asking Solo.
"No he didn't," Solo replied, his voice unconcerned, "But if there is any, I guess we'll find out."
"One way or another, eh?" Joe chuckled. "I'm glad I'm not in front."
Raymont froze. It was icy cold but he was sweating. What was he afraid of? Looking down into the black gaping hole beneath him, he reminded himself how it was natural for man to be afraid of darkness. Fear was an animal thing, and he could rationalize it away. He was a man.
"Is there something wrong?" Jessine asked from above him.
"Yes, what's slowing things down there?" Joe yelled down from above.
Raymont didn't answer. Swallowing, he continued down. Darkness soon enveloped him. Looking up, he could see the distant circle of light that marked the opening. Seeing Raymont look up, Solo turned his own face to look at the disc of daylight far above them.
"Dia, this thing's deep," he muttered. "Onzlo was quite a digger."
Joe, who was last, stopped when he heard a soft clattering sound. He was grateful that he hadn't called the party's attention to it when he realized that his was his own teeth chattering. He was freezing.
"Alright, I've had enough!" Jessine was the first to say it.
"Yea, me too," Joe agreed. "I guess we didn't realize how cold it would be down here."
"Alright," Solo decided, "Let's get the hell out of here. We'll come back with that heater and an extra set of dry clothing for when we get to the bottom."
All three of them started to climb back up. They were halfway up when they realized that Raymont hadn't followed.
"You two go on ahead," Jessine told them.

Descending back down, she came back to Raymont. "What's the matter?", she asked him.
He didn't answer but, looking up, it seemed he was trying to talk.
Hanging precariously by her boot and hand, she reached down to grab him. He was icy cold.
"Dia, you're freezing," she gasped. "Cmon, you'll die down here."
Prying his hand free, which was no easy task, she pulled it up to the next rung. It was dangerous work. Jessine had to try and maintain her own hold as she urged his own hands upward. She realized she would have to be underneath him in case he fell.
"Now, hold on," she told him. Jessine released her legs and using just her hands, tried to lower her body over his, trying to get below him. She could feel her heart thumping a mile a minute. She was holding on, just next to him when one of her hands slipped off the slick wet metal rung. She flailed trying to grasp it but, by that time, the weight of her body had pulled her other hand off. Raymont's frozen muscles made a fruitless effort to grab her, but her jacket slipped past his fingers as she fell down into the hole. Raymont wasn't sure how long it was before he heard her body hit bottom.

When Joe and Solo came back, carrying dry clothes and the heater tied to their packs, Raymont had somehow descended even farther.
"Where's Jessine?" Joe asked him.
"Ffffllll" his frozen lips sputtered. Solo thought the kid's face looked rather blue as he shined a light on it.
"Cmon, kid, hang on," Solo told Raymont. Grabbing Raymont, Solo draped Raymont's body over his shoulder. "Grab my pack, he told him." Then Solo began to quickly descend, ignoring the cold. Even with the added weight, Solo was outpacing Joe as he shimmied down the ladder. There was one close call as one of Solo's hands slipped on one of the wet rungs. But then, after what seemed forever, they reached bottom. Muscles that neither man knew he had were screaming objections.
Not having shined their light down as they went, Solo didn't see that the room was flooded. As he hit the cold cold water, he yelled, "Fuckin Dia!" Forewarned, Joe did not step into the water.
Scanning his light around, Solo couldn't see where Jessine was. Grimacing, he stepped down into the water, but as soon as his foot touched the bottom, he slipped and went under.
"UHHH!" The cold had knocked the wind out of him. Frantically he grabbed for the ladder. Joe reached out and helped pull him in.
After gasping several times to catch his breath, Solo swore, "Damn that Onzlo! He didn't mention anything about needing to be divers!"
Joe shined his light around. Onzlo's ladder and plasticrete wall had come straight down, obviously entering the ship where severe damage had breached the vessel all the way through the interior. Above them, were the torn edges of other decks, conduit and cables strewn everywhere. Rocks and mud had flowed down into the hole and several large boulders lay propped over smashed equipment. Though Onzlo's ladder had descended straight, the ship itself had come to be buried, not quiet level. Assuming that the bow had buried itself toward the craterlake, the deck had come to rest with about a seven degree tilt portside down, while the bow also was turned down about 26 degrees. The water had collected into a pool at these ends of the ship. Tilting away from them, the aft and starboard sides seemed dry, though dripping condensation was everywhere. Looking in that direction, they could see several rows of what looked like benches, some flat, some angled.
Solo noticed that one of them had lights going.
"Hey," he said. "That one over there is powered."
"What is this place?" Joe asked.
"I think it's part of the sickbay," Solo told him. "Those platforms are beds."
"Jessss, Jesss" Raymont chattered.
Solo looked back at the pool. It was probably the place Jessine's body was.
"We've got to dry out," Joe told him, "or we'll be dead too."
Solo nodded and taking Raymont, proceeded to pull himself upward, followed by Joe. The mud he had slipped on wasn't all over the cleaner side, and something about the floor gave their feet better purchase as they pulled upward. When they came to the table that Solo pointed out, they could see that the info consoles above and at it's foot were lit and operating.
"Hey, it's warm," Joe discovered. Looking down at his feet, Joe discovered a series of cables linked from an open wall plate to the bed, where a coverplate had also been removed. No other beds seemed to have been powered in this way.
"Hey Solo," Joe called out. "Look at this."
Solo placed Raymont carefully onto the bed, where Raymont clasped it's warmth like it was from his mother. Walking and pulling himself around to where Joe was pointing, Solo noted the cable.
"I would say that someone wired this table up, after the crash."
"Probably Onzlo," Solo remarked. Joe nodded, though he wasn't sure he agreed.
Just then, lights came on above them and several instruments and probes descended upon Raymont's prostrate form. Before anyone could react, one of the arms injected a hypo spray into Raymont's neck. Raymont's body instantly sagged into unconsciousness.

Several more instruments went to work on Raymont. Solo tried to intervene but just got smashed in the face for his efforts (take 10 hits, -10 to appearance until healed) when the "elbow" of one of the machines swung around and bashed him.
"How do we turn it off?!" Solo yelled.
Joe pulled him back. "I don't think there's anything we can do," he replied. "I'm not sure. I think the machine might be treating him for hypothermia."
"You mean it's an auto, er, doctor bed or something?" Solo replied, his mouth mushy with blood.
Joe looked over at him. "Well, if it is, maybe we'd better put you on next."
As they watched, a dome lowered itself from above and covered Raymont. A mist appeared inside, obscuring his body.
"What if it isn't a med-thing?" Solo asked. "What if it's killing him?"
"I don't know," Joe replied, feeling just as helpless. "We could kill him if we interfere. I know nothing of medicine."
"Well, if this thing's for dissecting alien bodies," Solo told Joe, "I'll tell Raymont's ghost it was your idea that we left him in there."

A door slid open behind them. Both men forgot about Raymont and turned around. It was Jessine and not only was she alive, but she was dry, clean and her hair was even set.
"You're alive!" Solo's mouth mushed.
"Shouldn't I be?" Jessine answered him. "There's power on in one of the staterooms out here." Jessine pointed to the corridor beyond. "I was freezing so I cleaned up, myself and clothes. I found food too," she told them.
"Sounds like heaven," Joe pulled past her. "Which one is it?"
She pointed out the next stateroom door on the left. As Joe approached it, it slid open.
Solo went to check it out also, but Jessine put her hand on his chest. "What's that thing over there doing?" she asked of the machine, not seeing Raymont's body inside.
"I don't know, Jess," he told her, "It's either killing him or curing him, I hope."
"Jess?" She shook her head, "Anyway, could either of you tell me where we are and how long I've been away? There was this sudden pain, like being hit in the chest with a hammer. Then I came to and was nearly drowning in freezing cold water, and in the dark to boot."
Solo's jaw dropped. "Tessa?"
Tessa nodded.

They camped that night in the room Tessa had found. They decided that in the morning, they would send Joe to go talk to the others and tell them what they had found. Taking shifts to observe Raymont, they didn't see him get up as it was while Tessa was going back to tell Joe something that the dome slid off the bed and after an injection of a stimulant, Raymont popped up, feeling new and good as ever, save for his damp clothing.
"Glad to see you're O.K, Kid," Solo told him. "Do you think that thing can help with my face?"
"I don't think it can work miracles," Joe smirked, "But you might want to give it a try."
Rather than answering, Solo just growled.

Splitting up, the party made a cursory scan of the ship, before calling it a day.

Tessa pried open a door to yet another stateroom. Almost all the ones she had checked had been empty, probably indicating that their occupants were at battlestations. However, in this one, she found that the occupant had remained and, as was to be expected, was dead, his smelly skeleton draped back into a luxuriant chair, behind what looked like a desk. Looking about the stateroom with her glowlight, also found in the first room, Tessa scanned for anything that might seem salvageable. Several fine rugs were on the floor and in a box in the dresser, she found gems and jewelry. She even tried a few on before going back to the man's dead body to give it a once over. As was obvious by now, the man who lived here had been rich, perhaps a high ranking officer. His body was draped in fine black silk with a heraldric emblazon (A black fist holding a sceptre, emblazoned on a field of red.) on the upper left shoulder. Around his waist was a costly looking belt, which seemed to also be a device of some type. She had no idea what killed the man, but his body seemed undamaged from what she could tell.
Touching a dark panel on his desk, she was startled when a glowing hologram appeared to unfold before her, it's dark globe speckled with stars, while floating red characters and numbers danced before it. It was a star chart. Touching another panel and the field moved and zoomed suddenly toward one system, which just as quickly turned into a planet. It was Phaon itself. She could recognize the Samnian continent and the cities of Avalon, Winnaker and Darbyville were labeled with dots suggesting city lights. She touched another panel and the image zoomed onto the largest continent, onto a mountain range where a red glowing dot appeared beside a large round lake. The dot pulsed. She touched it again, trying to change the setting, but the image remained frozen, hovering above the table.
Chagrined, she couldn't figure how it could turn off, or how it was powered, so leaving the image, Tessa was about to make her exit with the jewels when her foot touched something under the table. Reaching down, she pulled out a black cylindrical device which had a power grid on one end. Flicking a switch, a long red beam instantly grew out of the handle. She had found a lightsabre, which meant that the dead man was probably a knight.
Something sharp pained her for a moment, as if a pin had pricked her head, but then it was gone. Shaking her head, she gathered her booty along with the other things she had found (3 energy cells, one workable lamp and files of computer chips) and made her way back to the others.

Solo and Joe pried open the double doors, gasping for breaths of stale air as they laboured to pry the doors open, positive that they had at last found engineering. Once the doors had been opened, they stepped through, their breaths taken away by the sight that presented itself. It was not engineering. Dim lights illuminated a vast bay where there were tiers of chambers, similar to Raymont's Medical Function Bed, except these were obviously some sort of complex cryo chamber. They even seemed to have a sort of drive unit attached, as if they were capable of flight. Inside of each was an armoured trooper, lying asleep, ready to be ejected in his drop tube. Some of the chambers were breached, and, judging from the smell coming from them, Solo guessed that the occupants were long dead. Some however, showed signs of being powered. In these, neither Solo or Joe could determine if the marine inside was merely sleeping or dead. Looking about the bay, Solo could see thousands of these chambers.
"Good thing these guys can't get up," Joe remarked.
Solo nodded, noting that inside each chamber was a heavy blaster and blaster pistol. These guys weren't meant to take prisoners.
(Total treasure found enroute, 2 Working multiscanners, 9 techscanners, any number of Mk II and V blasters from breached cryodrop tubes.)

Rather than travel aft, Raymont had decided to climb up some of the wreckage in the medical bay and explore one of the upper floors. It was really a mess in this part of the ship. Dead members of the crew, who had been missing elsewhere, could be found, crushed beneath rocks or fallen bulkheads, or just lying as dead skeletons in their uniforms. Good men and women, or bad, they had all died together.
Tunneling through much of the debris like a terran mole, Raymont found several interesting areas for future exploration, however noting everywhere that the air was dead and stale. He found a number of galleys, what looked like a holo theatre, training gyms, and a dead hydroponics lab. Prying open what he hoped to be the door to a closet or tool shed, looking for heavy tools to open other heavily sealed rooms which he guessed held weapons, Raymont was startled to discover the inert forms of seven anti-grav robots. Each had two weapons mounts on either "arm" and what served as a bottom looked like a revolving turret with numerous gun barrels pointing out. Fortunately, these deadly looking droids seemed inactive and locked into place. They were probably intended to fend off boarding actions, Raymont decided, glad that they had never been switched on.
Disappointed at finding heavy cutting tools, Raymont explored further into the ship, deciding to try just one more room before he headed back. It was laborious work prying the dead auto doors open. Using a twisted strut that he had found, Raymont pried open a promising looking pair of double doors. Inside, he was surprised to find more dead bodies, all broken and hurled against the forward wall, and several powered consoles. More surprising was that the room was still powered, obviously operating from an independent source. It looked like some sort of control station, though Raymont doubted it was the bridge. It was too small, there was no viewscreen and none of the stations seemed to have displays dealing with navigation or what he would have supposed to have been space faring instrumentation. It seemed like these people had been busy, trying to erase files, but none of them had gotten very far. Most of the files seemed to have military references, but Raymont couldn't be sure, since many of them were encrypted. However, one file seemed to top the list to be erased. It was labeled in clear Galcom as "Genesis." At one console, there was a broken skeleton still strapped into the chair before it. The monitor was blinking, asking for a confirmation that this file was to be indeed deleted. The operator had probably just been about to press the button when the ship hit ground and his body had been hurled forward and beaten to pieces against the console, his safety straps locking the poor tech into place. Raymont noted the shattered skull and dark stains on the console. Examining the tech's lapels, Raymont noted that, though he didn't know what rank the tech was, he or she had probably been higher than others he had found, judging by the fancy filigree and larger design.
Not knowing what to make of what he had found, Raymont went back to join the others. (Treasure found, 715 Galatian crowns in various paper denominations, 1 working tech scanner, and some sort of multiscanner).

Thorn and Leon made themselves comfortable, trying to get the cave into shape should the ship prove unsuitable for a long stay. Thorn continued to search about the boxes, however coming up with nothing new except more of Onzlo's everpresent vidporn. However, as there was no viewer to watch the files, Thorn was unplagued about whether the boredom of the wilderness would tempt her into making use of them. Instead, she settled down to rest, considering rigging up a pole to try and catch some silverfish. She had no doubt that porcama stew would grow old quick.
Bug had long since disappeared on his scouting mission when Solo and Joe stomped back into the cave, saying that it was bitter cold in the hole and after grabbing their jackets, they insisted on taking the only portable heater. Thorn shook her head as they stomped off. It was going to be a cold night in the cave.
As darkness fell, neither the party scouting the ship nor Bug had made a return yet. Leon was sleeping, so growing concerned, Thorn left the cave, going out for a walk. She had made it down to the river, scanning the dam for any signs of life when Bug at last made his appearance. He had flown in in a dreadful hurry. Grabbing a hold of Thorn, Bug rattled off several clicks in rapid succession. Thorn had to shake him, yelling at him to speak in Galcom.
"I found the miners!" he told her. "They're dead! They're all dead!"
"How are they dead?" Thorn asked him.
"They've been murdered. The tops of their head blown off!" he yelled back. "Thorn! There's a murderer here with us!"
Thorn looked at the rocks and boulders around them. Each one seemed to grow eyes, hostile, with an unknown purpose.

As far as Thorn knows, no one except for the descent party and Bug left the cave. Bug, despite his claims to be a warrior hatch, carries no apparent weapons and has never shown interest in any (food yes, weapons no).

Bug takes you to the miners camp, which is about 10 kilometres away. There are three dead human males. They were very tall but other than that, show no unremarkable traits that you can make out. Certainly, nothing that would indicate why they had been murdured. A local mine is nearby, but there is no evidence of any of the equipment, such a phased borers, core samplers, explosives, etc that should be present. What is present are some rather insignificant hand tools. Also, all of their food rations seem to be present, though apparently some have been broken into. You would guess, by animals. All three have been dead some time, and as Bug has said, with their heads blown off. Their wallets have been removed from their bodies, but no money has been taken nor are their Id cards absent. Their names were Brelton, Yian, & Potyor. All had the same family name, Anton. Judging from holopics in their wallets, you guess that Brelton and Potyor left behind famillies. Total money carried is 871 pounds cash. Id card funds are, of course, theoretically unaccesable.

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