Time passes. After about nine hours of uninterupted sleep, everyone is paged by Hale and reminded that there is a general meeting for all crew not currently in quarantine on the bridge.
Additionally, Navigtator Moore has sent a message to everyone on the active crew. The image of him shows the quarantine room, four other people sitting around the table and looking at Moore as he somewhat nervously asks, "Um, what the hell is going on? 'Hale' is acting screwy."
After that Hale illuminates the route to the bridge, with a brief allowance to get something to eat before meeting up with everyone else.
Kelly, well used to standard coder hours, was swiftly up and at 'em, grabbing some food and going to see whether there was going to be anyone else working the systems.
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Finn briefly contemplates checking her messages -- something she never quite got around to before collapsing last night -- but instead decides to head straight to the bridge, stopping only to grab a tube of Something.
Somewhat blearily, Albert gets up and heads to the bridge, although he seems mostly together by the time he arrives.
After hearing Moore's message, he activates a videolink to the quarantine room.
"Don't worry," he tells the assembled crewmen in a somewhat patronising tone as he rubs his hands together. "This is your captain, Albert Riley, speaking. Everything is under control.
"Hale is somewhat damaged from the event which killed the first crew, but rest assured we are doing everything possible to remedy the situation."
Finn actually beats Kelly to the bridge, long years of spacer experience and a resistance to the lingering effects of cold-sleep allowing her to grab a tube of NutriPaste first. Kelly and Finn are at the bridge first, but Eric is not far behind.
The huge man is wearing what looks like homespun clothes. Rubbing his eyes, he peers at both Kelly and Finn, mumbling, "Didn't find your clothes yet?" Not waiting for an answer, he gets a bulb of coffee from the dispenser, and sets about waking up a bit more.
Kelly shrugged. "Wasn't... a big priority with the state of hale."
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Finn blinks, and then looks down at her functional coveralls. Other clothes? Whafor?
Once the other crew sees that someone is in charge, they calm down and go to quietly waiting for quarantine to release them; not much can be done from Quarantine right now.
Eric frowns, and looks around for the missing crewman. "Anyone know what's holding up our engineer?" he asks.
Albert glances around at that question, before shrugging. "Hale, location of engineer Kieran?" he asks the omnipresent ship's computer.
"Crewman Kieran is currently in his quarters," the computer replies instantly.
"Tell him to wake up, then," Albert concludes authoritatively.
"Crewman Kieran is not responding to audible notifications," Hale says after a moment. "Integrated systems operand suggests medical examination."
Finn raises an eyebrow. "Do we got a doctor defrosted?" she asks. "'Sides, wif the way systems have been messed up, ain't that a sorta premature conclusion, sort of fing?"
"Currently, there are no medical advisors outside of quarantine," Hale answers. "Further analysis awaits a trained technician."
Kelly sighed. "Look, one of us can just go check on him afterwards, Captain. We have more important things at the moment to deal with."
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"Such as?" Albert asks, turning to Kelly. This potential medical emergency certainly seemed like the most urgent thing at the moment, as far as he knew.
"Getting the rest of the crew up to date. Repairing the ship's integrated operand. Figuring out where we are and the extent of the ship damage. Worrying that Engineer Kieron overslept after yesterday's ship doesn't sound to me like a huge priority. Even if it was, it doesn't take all of us twiddling our thumbs about it to get something done."
Kelly shrugged. "We got a lot of work ahead of us."
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Finn cocks an eyebrow at Kelly. "So, you wanna do Kieran's job?"
Kelly blinked. "You know what? Fine, I'll go check his quarters. Hale, which way to Kieron's quarters?"
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"Yes, go check up on him," Albert nods. "If it's nothing major, then no problem. But I'd rather not take any chances with half our complement already dead."
"Sure thing, Captain. Hale?"
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"Directions to Crewman Kieran's quarters are now provided," Hale replies, illuminating a strip at about eye-level height that leads out of the room and down the hall.
Kelly follows it to the door to Kieran's room without any trouble. The door's Privacy switch is not turned on, so Kelly peeks in, entering a slightly warmer-than-usual room.
Kieran appears to be laid out on his cot, sweating profusely in his sleep.
Kelly went to do what any non-medically trained person would do in this environment. He went to check Kieron's forehead for a fever. "Hey, Kieron, you okay?" He shook him a little bit.
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Kieran actually feels cool to Kelly's touch, but doesn't wake when moved/spoken to.
"Hale, you have any medical databases online at all?" Kelly asked, not expecting anything.
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"Certainly," Hale says. "It is not included under my default search parameters, but I am able to retrieve it. One moment."
Hale is quiet for a bit before he replies, "Crewman Kieran is an Angel, and therefore requires temperatures to be lower than the norm for comfort and awareness." The room's heating instantly adjusts, as the vents begin pouring much colder air into the room. "It would be advisable to consult with a physician, but records indicate a 96% chance of full recovery within 24 hours."
"Okay. Sheesh, any reason why he turned on the heat so high in here previously?"
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"The heat was not adjusted by Crewman Kieran," Hale says after a moment. "I would hypothesize that he forgot to recharge the battery on his protective sweater. I am not linked to it, so a definitive inquiry is not immediately possible."
"Ah. I see. Oh well."
Kelly headed back to the bridge.
"Captain, Kieron is sick, but should recover soon. He failed to take proper precautions against the heat."
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"You'd think he'd be more careful about things like that," Albert mutters with a trace of annoyance.
"Oh, well, leaving that aside, what progress has everyone made on their repairs?" he asks the three assembled crewmen.
Finn shrugs, her eyes and hands preoccupied with the game of solitaire she dealt out while waiting for Kelly. "Airlock's up'n'runnin' again," she reports. "Workshop's in good shape, too, an' so're the suits."
"Yes, you were just waiting on a robot, weren't you?" Albert nods, rubbing his chin. "Hale, what's the current progress on dust cleaning?"
"The cleanup effort is proceeding as projected," Hale replies. "Current projections indicate that the outer hull should be habitable without special equipment within two days."
Eric grunts. "I stayed up late, Captain, but I did get that final bot cleaned out and fixed. It was seriously modified, though, so I had Hale take out the memory core. Until we know for certain what was planned with it...." He shrugs uncertainly, and looks at Kelly questioningly.
"I'll take a look at it first thing. As I said last night, Captain, Hale's had a memory core removed which we'd do well to find. Until then, it is kind of limited in what it has to tell us."
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Albert nods to both Eric and Kelly. "What sort of modifications?" he asks the former. "With Mr Keiron's discovery of the killswitch in the atmospheric processors and what I've read of the late captain's logs, it's not painting a very inspiring picture of our predecessor's last days..."
"Well," Eric temporizes, "keep in mind I work with hydraulics, not robotics, so most of this is what I got from Hale when I asked what exactly some of the things I was looking at were. Most of the bots are equipped with a number of tools so they can affect repairs without needing to report to an engineering station first. This bot had the majority of its tools removed, as well as all of its shielding. I originally thought that it wasn't meant to work in an atmosphere, but Hale reminded me that dust exists outside of atmospheres, as well, even if its more rare.
"The bot has had the majority of its casing stripped off, so it'll get fouled much more easily than the others on dust, but its articulators make it faster. Also, without the bulky outer casing, it could theoretically fit through smaller passages, like the airways. Of course, the entire ship is so accessible I can't think of a reason this would be neccessary...."
Eric shrugs. "Aside from that, Captain, you mentioned a meeting to discuss our findings?"
Albert chews his lip for a moment as he digests Eric's report. "I'm not sure what to make of that, myself.
"In any case, yes, we should discuss things. From the state of the ship and what I read in the late captain's logs, it's blatantly apparent that a mutiny took place, which was probably an indirect cause of the crew's deaths. So our two priorities right now are getting the ship in working order and properly manned, and finding out exactly what caused the first crew to turn on each other.
"The former is more important at this stage, but we can't ignore the latter - especially as it could be related to the mission we originally departed for."
"Well, it may not exactly be news, but from what I could see, they were making something in the workshop as a jamming device. What exactly it's supposed to jam, I don't know, though. It just broadcasts short-range noise on all communication frequencies. Doesn't knock out the bots, but it does keep them from talking to Hale," Eric volunteers. "Other than that, I think it looks like the workshop was set up to be barricaded, so access could be more controlled."
"Maybe something to do with the signal we were sent out to track?" Albert ponders, before speaking up, "Hale, when was the last recorded contact with the ET Signal?"
"The last recorded contact is the original transmission," Hale says smoothly. "There are no records of this ship recieving any other transmissions."
"And the antenna has been knocked out how long?" Eric asks.
Hale replies, "Ever since the incident."
"Of course, we don't know exactly how long that is," Albert observes. "Hopefully we can work out more once we get a navigator up here... who's all in quarantine right now, Hale?"
"Doctor Jack Helms, Navigator Samuel Moore, Mechanic Bryce Hawthorn, Pilot Harris O'Keefe, and Sensor Technician Jessica Torm," Hale replies. "Seven hours remain in quarantine."
"Why don't I just go over that odd robot's memory banks now if there isn't anything better to do?"
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"Yes, you do that," Albert nods briskly.
Kelly starts taking apart the memory core. The rod logic seems to be most readable, and what Kelly is looking at was obviously hacked together very quickly; it's not subtle at all. The robot was designed to fit through air ducts to reach things that were installed within the air ducts themselves. These things should all be accessible from within the ship normally, however, so why this was done is questionable.
Kelly checked to see if there were any voice or memory logs prior or during it's modification.
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No logs remain on the memory core -- the robot was never even activated, since the rod logic hasn't moved from its initial readable state to the encrypted state of committed code. Presumably, the data that was wiped from the holistic storage units was only a log about the bot being shut down ... before it was wiped by whatever wiped all the holo memory.
"Well, the bot is designed to go through airducts and reach things installed in them. Though, I don't know why. It's memory logs are all wiped."
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"Airducts?" Albert repeats. "Perhaps something related to the killswitches in the atmospheric processors?" he frowns, "But that can't be right... they were controlled centrally, anyway. It wouldn't matter what you did to the airducts if you cut the air off at the source..."
"Well," Eric says slowly. "That ... might explain things, actually. We found little jamming defices. Hale, can bots run without your control?"
"The repair bots do enjoy some degree of automation beyond my control," Hale says. "Among them, their instructions to replace me if I cease to respond for a specific duration."
Eric nods to himself. "Maybe, the jamming devices were meant to interfere with the robots. We don't know what frequency the killswitches were using, and probably whoever made the jammers didn't, either. But robots are easier to jam since their frequencies are listed in their repair manual, so it'd be easier to make a device for that purpose.
"The bot was probably designed to sneak in and take out killswitches, even if the AI had updated instructions that said to leave them alone."