Act I: Mercurian Underground

[Jon]

Michael watches avidly from the back corner of the bridge.

[Halbarad]

It takes the massive doors several minutes to open fully, but once they do, you have little difficulty in navigating the ship into the shaft - it's more than wide enough to accommodate the Silver Star. The ship descends at a snail's pace as it moves down the shaft, the bore eventually curving around towards the horizontal, much as the maintenance tunnel did. After about five minutes, you've reached the inner door, which is still sealed fast.

The next few seconds are rather busy. The first thing you note is the computerized voice of your own ship: "Unauthorized system access detected." Mere moments after that, the viewscreen begins to fill with Lunarian text:

<Navigation system and ship identification failed. Please input ship ID and confirm manual entry during pressurization.>

[Carthrat]

Arkian shrugs. "It wants our ID. Why not?"

Tapping away, he inputs the Silver Stars ID code.

"'Confirm Manual Entry', though.. it might want someone downstairs to open the ship doors for us.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see.."

[Halbarad]

The response comes back a few moments later.

<Ship Silver Star not found in database; recording as unknown registry.>

It waits a few more moments, then the screen clears and more text replaces the old. <Navigation system interlock failure. Confirm manual entry before proceeding.>

[Carthrat]

Arkian transmits back 'Confirming Manual Entry', figuring more that he has to land the ship himself rather than have the docking bay do it for him, or some such.

[Halbarad]

<Manual entry confirmed; please dock in Berth 4 to the left. Wait a few moments for pressurization to complete.>

WIth that, the screen goes blank once more. And a couple of minutes later, you see the doors ahead of you begin to inch open slowly.

[Carthrat]

Once the doors have opened, Arkian carefully directs the ship to Berth 4 as best as he can, breathing a sigh of relief.

"That was relatively painless," he remarks.

[Halbarad]

There's a lot of debris strewn around near the packing crates next to the berth marked 4, but you set the ship down with a minimum of fuss.

[Carthrat]

Arkian leans back in the cockpit chair, musing.

"Well, we have about three weeks to look around," he says. "I don't think there's any rush at the moment, so we may as well spend a day or so getting to know the docking bay."

[Ebiris]

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Rowan nods her assent. "This also makes a good place to establish our base camp - we're sealed in, so even if the atmospheric generator has any problems, we won't lose air pressure."

Assuming no one voices any objections, Rowan reseals her space suit and goes to collect said generator before disembarking and setting it up about 50 metres from the ship, closer to the centre (as far as she can judge) of the docking bay.

[Halbarad]

The setup goes without incident; you secure the generator on the floor, and after activating it a large, translucent blue dome with the generator at its center. The atmosphere indicator turns red as the machine hums, then after a few minutes of work it turns green, indicating that the atmosphere inside the dome is both clean and under sufficient pressure.

[Ebiris]

"Atmosphere established," Rowan reports over the radio, looking around to take in the Docking Bay now that she has the benefit of the Silver Star's landing lights, as well as seeing how far the atmospheric dome extends throughout the area.

[Carthrat]

Arkian decends carefully from the ship, likewise observing the atmospheric generator.

Naturally, he still has his magic pressure device on.

[Halbarad]

One word is suitable to describe the docking bay. Huge. The ship's powerful floodlights finally manage to illuminate a good amount of the room; from what you can see, the ceiling is easily a hundred meters overhead, and the room stretches nearly a kilometer from wall to wall. The dome of the atmospheric generator's field reaches about halfway to the roof of the bay.

The main thing that stands out with the floodlights on is on the opposite side of the main entry door: a row of six rather small, spidery-looking craft, parked in neat rows of three each.

[Ebiris]

"I think I see some inspection craft over there... or they might be tugs. I'm unfamiliar with the design..." Rowan reports over the radio, bunny-hopping across the bay to get a closer look.