First Contact³

The Team carefully approached the village with empty hands displayed, intent on peaceful communication. As previously observed, the village was populated (at the moment) with naught but children, women and the elderly; an elder woman stepped forth to angrily scold the Team in an unknown language, while they held their distance, discussing amongst themselves how they might communicate their non-hostile intentions. A nervous, rifle-wielding child fired a shot, meant for Ella (who was doing the talking, for what it was worth), that hit Sam in the chest, but failed to penetrate his tacsuit—the other villagers’ actions, as a result of the shot, led the Team to believe it to be an accident, so they did not retaliate.

There was a commotion amongst the villagers, and they flocked over to the other side of the village, toward a nearby river; a child had slipped, and was hanging by his fingers above a nearby waterfall—a 6-7 meter drop. The Team had circled around the village to see what the commotion was about, and upon seeing the scene, Abe lept immediately forward, quickly producing safety-line from his survival kit and, with some help from the village’s older children, rescued the child before he could lose his grip. After the rescue, the Team was well-received by the villagers, taken indoors and given food; Abe attended the rescued child’s wounds, amazing them with his technological capabilities. Haank listened closely to their speech in an attempt to identify the language; some consideration was given to recording it for creation of a translation database.

The village’s men arrived some time later to find “strangers” among them. After some unintelligible discussion with the villagers present, presumably telling them of the boy’s rescue, the men seemed accepting of their presence; Sam attempted to communicate their desire to locate the Imperial colony through hand-gestures, and the villagers seemed to get the gist, indicating (as it was interpreted) a three-day journey.

On the following morning, the Team set out, with a group of warriors leading; the direction was a bit off from what the Team had determined to be the direction of the colony, but they made no attempt to correct it, presuming the locals “knew what they were doing.” Around three days from the village, the group arrived at a landed, decades-old, battle-damaged Beowulf-class free trader, next to four burial-mounds; the Team gifted the villagers with all the survival-kit rifles they had, and the villagers went their way in peace. The Team immediately set about checking out the ship, the Proud Mary, sifting through the logs and such, and restoring it to a sufficiently functional state to move.

The logs indicated that they had been forced to land here sometime during the Fifth Frontier War, long before the colony was established, so there was nowhere to go, and were stranded as a result of a damaged jump-drive that could not be repaired. They had mapped the area extensively, and traded with the locals before they all succumbed to a local disease—the first casualty being their medic; the burial mounds were theirs. The ship’s cat returned from abroad (identified as “Mia” in the ship’s logs), and seeing the open hatch, immediately took up the flight deck, as if she owned the place—Abe took this as a good omen.

Once systems were restored to basic functionality, Sam carefully piloted the ship to the last known position of the Titanic’s lifeboat; it was successfully squeezed into the hold, with some difficulty. After the lifeboat recovery, the Team took the ship in the direction of the colony; once in range of their communication, Ella broadcast a distress call regarding the Titanic and requested landing clearance, which was received and granted. Once landed, the engineering team immediately set about continuing the process of repairs, while the colonials were further filled in on what had transpired. For reasons she did not discuss, Ella decided to leave out details of the Team’s contact with the local tribe.

It was determined that it would take at least three weeks for another company ship to arrive and investigate the lack of contact with the Titanic VII, so her survivors settled in for an extended stay, some attempting to find work at the colony: Abe easily convinced the medical team to accept his help, and developed a “rapport” with the CMO; Haank, looking for something new to learn, volunteered his help to the department providing security for the geological survey teams; Sam opted to hang out at the colony’s bar, watching TV and listening to colonials’ rumors and stories; Buck stayed aboard the ship, continuing his repairs and maintenance.

Around four days after the Team’s arrival at the colony, colony vehicles returned with wounded, having been attacked by locals: Abe was called to duty with the medical team, and demonstrated his medical talent with his first(?) trauma-surgery, managing to save the life of a colony man who was deemed “too far gone”; Haank met up with the security team and tried to get the facts of the incident; Ella and Buck kept a lookout from the ship. Colony management added that there were people in outlying homesteads that were still under attack, and the Team volunteered to take the ship out to the homesteads and evacuate them…