Mission SOS rescue

You have discovered an SOS message coming from the desert planet Kelha II. After relaying it to your boss you discovers that a crew was sent down to industrialize the planet for mining goods but something happened. Your boss has asked you to look into it and rescue any survivor you might encounter.

Difficult A

Time Limit: unknown

Reward: ???

(mission = quest, it sounds much better for a sci-fi game)

Noah: ”might have guessed it was something like this”

I stare at the mission intensely as I read it. The difficulty was already the indicator that something extreme was going to happen. It is widely known that B and A rank quest have large scale effects. In older fantasy games a B rank mission can effect a region depending on the quest and an A rank is said to affect the whole continent while the most famous the S rank had a worldwide effect. But in The Nebula its unknown because the scale of the galaxy. As I look at it I notice the control room group talking away at the comms.

Noah: something wrong?

Adam: yes, the whole crew is in an uproar, more than half of them are in a panic when they saw the quest and want to reject the quest.

Mores: WHAT DID YOU SAY!!!

Noah: im sorry but how many people are against it.

Adam looks through at the monitor a bit then turns back.

Adam: the numbers are 20 soldiers, 8 techs and 15 mechanics. No scientists or manufacturing crew members care about the quest so they are calm. That means 43 of our 120 members are panicking.

Noah: why are they even panicking I haven’t even accepted the mission.

Adam: they are saying that its beyond them they will never finish it…damn it the fighters and our miners are returning to the ship and landing and are refusing to continue while we consider doing this mission.

Noah: damn it, all of you call the other miners and tell them we ran into a problem and they should return to the station because we can’t protect them that well now.

They get busy calling the other pilots; soon we see dozens of dingy fly back towards the station.

Noah: *breaths deeply* great Mr. Cane we will talk about this mission when we return to the station were we can talk in private and calmly and get more details.

Mores: yes I think you are having to much trouble with that unfaithful crew of yours, if you dismiss them I can see if some spare station personal would like to join your crew, your quite famous among the crew.

Noah: ill think about it, thanks for the offer.

The channel closes and I slump down on my seat

Noah: damn of all the times to get cold feet they had to choose now.

Ernest: don’t blame them this is the first A rank quest in the game.

Wilson: I understand what Noah is saying, as the first quest you would usually be excited to do it being the first will get you tons of fame.

Adam: I think they are just cowards; they don’t want the responsibility if they fail to fall on their backs

Everyone in the room nods to his statement. I open the monitor showing the hanger and there was all my ships packed in with a few fighters on top of each other from lack of space, bastards those are my ships. I just sigh deeply as I see those idiots shout in anger for getting them in something like this. I don’t even say anything as I pull the ship out of the asteroid field and dock at the station.

Noah: I really don’t want to go down and talk with them they are just a pain in the ass, I’m sure that they will continue doing this while we are still in a simple carrier.

Ernest: just fire them then we don’t need people like them, we can find plenty NPC who are much better than them.

Noah: I like that idea, NPC work better and I bet that the station hands are much more experienced than us players. Well let’s get to it.

We walk down to the hanger and into the crowd who starts yelling when we arrive. We ignore them as they yell and after a long 10 minutes I get angry and pull the laser pistol and shoot up which quites everyone.

Noah: good now that I have your attention I’ll say this once, everyone that was just annoyed from us discovering an A rank mission is fired so get off my ship after you drop the space suits and guns and all the tools you gained while working under me into the cargo hold.

They were all flabbergasted at what they heard, soon they regained their senses and began to remove all the things that belong to me and were only in their basic cloths they had when they arrived and they all left the ship with angry expressions.

Noah: ”great though there are still 77 members left, -20 from scientist and another 20 for the manufacturing team leaves 37 members to man the ship. The crew had 29 soldiers, 14 techs and 28 mechanics after the manufacturing team was formed. Now I will have 9 soldiers, 6 techs and 13 mechanics all this not counting my original crew damn this sucks”

I sit down on the ground against the wall as I stare at the tools and cloths on the floor of the now empty hanger.

Noah: this is going to be a pain in the ass.

I hung my head down dejected at the sight of my crew.

??? : Now is that how you should be acting, you did the right thing you know.

I look up and find Mr. Cane with Marcus behind him.

Marcus: I have a list of at least 40 station hands that want to go out in space instead of staying here.

I give him a weak smile after hear a bit of good news; at least I might still have enough people to man the ship.

Noah: ill look at it later I think its best us talk about this mission first.

Mores: yes I think that would work better.

We walked back to the top floor and turned into a room just before the control room. This room was similar to a conference room. A large table in the middle with about a dozen chairs all around, my original crew was all hear and the nine of us sat the same as our two guests.

Mores: well I’m glad at least the some of your crew remained.

Noah: I’m even more so sir, at least now I know who is loyal at least.

Mores: well then about this mission, we did a search of what little information we could gather before the transmission was cut, it was mainly geographic scans as well as the coordinates of the landing zone.

Marcus: we found that the asteroid field around the planet blocks signals from leaving because of its high metal content the same for the planet.

Earl: it’s been bugging me but how big is this planet, it doesn’t seem that large but I noticed that even when we enter the asteroid field the size doesn’t change much.

They both gave wary smiles before looking though some info on the interface and then transmitted it to the holo projector at the center of the table. An image of old earth appeared then it shrank to about a third of the size it showed and moved to the side and next to it Kelha II appeared. It was about 1/3 time bigger then earth.

Mores: like you see 1/3 times bigger than earth but it’s a mineral rich planet with a mass of double of earths the same goes for gravity.

Marcus: not to mention that he planet has a super thin atmosphere even less then mars back in the sol system.

Ernest: that is small then…didn’t the idea of terraforming the planet come to mind.

Mores: no only mining it, we can easily make an atmosphere inside the compounds used for mining so we didn’t have to worry…at least that was the plan.

Marcus: we don’t know the details but we think the freighters that were leaving the planet with a large cargo of ores were destroyed by something.

Noah: can we see the landing zone as well the underground compound that was made.

The nod and begin working. Soon earth vanishes and only Kelha II remains, then the image moves very close to the planet until the image of a compound appeared then in another second the ground around it vanished showing a complex network of tunnels under it.

Basil: hey I’m curious what ore is this and also this very black one at the edge here.

Mores: this in an iron vain and that black rock is densely packed bedrock.

Morgan: isn’t bedrock found below all the dirt?

Marcus: we were confused as well about this when we discovered this we think it might have been placed there by something to contain the mass of the mineral inside from escaping.

Noah: did you say the planet was uninhabited?

Mores: we never said that we said it had a small atmosphere.

We all became wide eyed when we heard this.

Marcus: we never found proof that there isn’t life on this planet but we always consider that because of what happened.

Noah: …cant it be considered now then?

Mores: you mean the rock creatures right.

I nod.

Mores: when you brought that in it was like a new puzzle piece had fallen into place and we could fit half of the messed up ones.

Noah: so you had the same idea of it then.

Mores: yes, it would make sense as well since they are rock they don’t require an atmosphere to survive evident by the fact that we are finding them in space.

Marcus: back on the topic, this here is the only land base we have, if the rock creatures exist here and are under the planet then they might have attacked the ship as it lifted off.

Noah: so what do you want us to do then?

Mores: we want you to go down there and see if there are any survivors. If there are help them get the base working if it’s not already.

Jonas: what if the rock creatures attack.

They just smiled warily and stayed quiet but we knew what that meant.

Mission SOS rescue

You have discovered an SOS message coming from the desert planet Kelha II. After relaying it to your boss you discovers that a crew was sent down to industrialize the planet for mining goods but something happened. Your boss has asked you to look into it and rescue any survivor you might encounter.

Difficult A

Objective: find any survivors or confirm that they are all dead. Get the base working.

Time Limit: unknown

Reward: ???

Noah: fine we will do this but you can guess right this isn’t something that can be done without a LOT of preparations.

Mission Accepted

Mores: we will help with what we can.

Noah: first let’s see that list of station personnel.

He uploaded the list to our computers. It was a pretty impressive list actually; it puts my crew to shame really. Manufacturing specialist, ship constructor, weapons constructor, engine mechanic, biologist, botanist, mechanic developer, technicians, guards, ect…

We sat wide eyed at the impressive list of prospective recruits, the current pay we had with the players wouldn’t cut it with them I bet.

Mores and Marcus were smiling as they see our expressions. We look and then suddenly Basil begins laughing

Basil: hey look at the end of the list look who wants to join.

We scrolls down and the last picture with the name next to it showed a familiar cubby man. Yep Gunners mug shot was there at the last one on the list. Almost half of my crew started laughing seeing his picture there, it could easily tell that we was getting aboard, I also want him on I could probably depend on him more with a gun then most of the crew who are still getting used to the space guns. Not to mention the man must know how to build the power suits since he is always wearing them. I look at this info which shows race and skills he allowed to be displayed.

Name: Gunner Rex

Race: Drune Rex

Skills: Gun Mastery (for all sizes) (Advanced 9)

Weapon Construction (Advanced 7

Ship construction (Advanced 3)

Scavenging (Master 2)

Hardware programmer (Advance 4

Software Programmer (Advance 4

Hacker (Advance 2)

Gun mastery (Master Max)

Power Suit construction (Master Max)

Power Suit Programmer (Master Max)

(hehe sry Viken, I wasn’t planning on it but then I though he is always with power suit and super smart and good with tools so the race was to perfect)

We laughed only until we saw the skills he showed then an abrupt silence came over everyone as we looked at his abilities. We already guessed he was a very skilled man but we never would have imagined it was to this extent.

Felix: um sirs…by any chance have you seen the skills of the men that want to join us.

Mores: most of them, there were a few that I didn’t bother seeing like the man from the junkyard.

I quickly gave a sharp glare at everyone to shut them up. They all knew exactly what I was planning.

Noah: so how do we choose who joins.

Mores: I’m sure there is an option to recruit at the top right hand corner.

We looked and we found the box so I click it and the screens gets wider and has two boxes now with the left one having all the applicants while the right one being empty and in between them were two small boxes that had arrows pointed to either left or right. I quickly found Gunner and tossed him into the recruiting box then we took a good hour looking through the others. They were all pretty good almost all of them had skills above intermediate. At the end of it all using the category we had before we gained 12 soldiers 10 techs, 10 mechanics, 2 biologist, 3 botanists, 2 tech developers and 1 Gunner Rex.

With a crew of 61 we have enough now to man the ship while the number of researchers increased by 8.

Mores: so everyone was taken well i not surprised they are all useful for the ship.

Noah: yes very much so…I was hoping you guys had blue prints for a power suit that could help us walk normally on the planet.

Mores: we had already prepared them for you but it’s no battle suit mind you it a miner suit that is used for high gravity planets like ours.

The blue prints are soon uploaded in our systems like he said they increase our strength by around 4 times to allow us the strength to hold ourselves up in higher gravity but the mobility is half the normal suit. I didn’t get discouraged because with the new researchers we now have some experienced personal that work on technology research.

Marcus: is there anything else needed for you need.

Noah: no I think its fine now, we just need construction materials to make the power suits.

Mores: those will be brought over the techs that you hires should have some knowledge of making power suits and they can’t teach your manufacturing team how to do the same.

Marcus: I guess that’s it then I hope you guys can get to the planet quickly we are worried about what happened and I hope you could get some of the systems up and running.

Noah: don’t worry we will try and see if we can do that.

Mores: well with everything done we wish you luck; your new crew will be coming soon.

With the talk done we followed them down to the hanger and watched them leave. After they left we just sighed from the tiring events that happened.

Noah: I really hope NPC are easier to work with.

Ernest: a few of them we are acquaintances with so you don’t need to worry they are good people and much better than the cowards that you fired.

As soon as he said that the new member’s began appearing with bags which probably contained their own tools and cloths. Gunner had the large cargo which he brought on a cart along with several bots that looked to be for made for heavy lifting.

Gunner: what the hell happened here what’s with these fighters piled up on each other?

Noah: that’s the work of the cowards that were fired an hour ago, we were given a mission to go down to the landing zone on Kelha II because we received a SOS from there.

This sent got them talking a lot things like, “what they are alive” “I can’t wait to go my brother was one that went down” “I can’t believe we will be the team that rescues them”

Ernest: well we don’t have to worry about them ditching us on the way like the players.

Noah: ya…ok everyone the rooms are mostly empty, once you find one you like and then get to your work spots.

They all salute and head out; I stop Gunner as he passes by.

Noah: hey Gunner can you lead teach the manufacturing team how to make power suits we will need them, we got some blue prints from Mores that will help us.

I send the plans to him; he stares at the screen then frowns.

Gunner: junk like this will help down there but they suck for any other uses if you want I can teach them and even you boys how to build some good stuff. We were hoping you would say that oh and hard and software programming would also be helpful of you could teach that to them as well as the techs.

He just salutes and heads off.

As the area cleared my dad and Jessica appeared from the station

Noah: hey what are you guys doing here?

Dad: we heard your crew has some opening spots and wanted to have our crews join up.

Jessica: ya my crew sufferers without mechanics and no in my crew wants to learn.

We start laughing at Jessica, she starts blushing as we laugh and then joins in.

Noah: ya that would help, you crew is fighters right Jessica what’s your dad I never saw any of them?

Dad: well mine are a few mechanics and techs they were excited to hear about the mission you got and wanted to join up.

Jessica: My crew just wants to be fighters and you seem to be around a lot of action so they wanted to join up.

Noah: I’m fine with that but I ask that you don’t act like my ex crewmates.

Dad/Jessica: no problem.

Noah: then get them up here then and working I hired NPC that are experienced so you can learn a lot from them.

They left quickly into the ship I’m sure they also called there crews.

The next few days went by quickly, of my 22 fighters, now Jessica’s counts as mine as well the same with the Gunship, we had to buy a station hanger inside the station to hold extra ships which stored 13 of the fighters. No what took off well was the science and manufacturing teams. The NPC crew members brought with them a LOT of experienced and they drilled it into the players. Gunner taught manufacturing team how to make power suits that didn’t had the same power as the blueprints we gained but it helped with movements in high gravity so we could move normally even on Kelha II. On the other hand the other tech developers took over the lab and with at least have the scientists he drilled knowledge pertaining the inner workings of laser weaponry into them and as such they are now working on researching on how to make turrets for the carrier as well as researching how to increase the output to the guns we have making them better. The techs that took up the post in the engine room drilled all their knowledge into the players of the inner workings of the normal engine and warp drives which promptly opened the door to increasing the abilities of the crew to repair the actual engine and also they learned how to make better engines which helped them build a totally new engine for the gunship.

During this time we would change shifts to mine so that we didn’t run out of money, and continued the mining plan of protecting the miners. With the funds we continued research and training for 1 month until I found we were ready and we had enough power suits for the whole crew including the manufacturing and research group. At the end of the month, the research group had been able to develop a two barrel turret that worked for the carrier and a smaller version for the gunship both of which was manned by fighters. The carrier had 6 turret entries, 1 on top 1 under and 2 on each side of the ship near the front and back. The gunship on the other hand had 2 turret spots near the back on the top side while the other was below the ship. The gun ship was also outfitted with a new engine thanks to the engine room mechanics.

After the month long of training and technology improvement I thought we were ready to venture down. I had gathered my crew and announced that we would go down and that provisions and repair materials were to be made and stored. I also went out of my way to purchase improved machinery for the lab and manufacturing workshop until it was considered an intermediate ranked workshop. The improvements also allowed us to process the ores into simple plate metal which raised the prices and income and it got to a point that we purchased the ores from the miners out in the field and processed it there.

During the final week as we got ready we did the same thing and filled 75% of the cargo hold with metal ingots and sheets so that we can later process its further into parts needed for repairs of the base on the planet. The weeklong preparation also herald an end to our money making plan because we warned the miners we would be going down to the planet to do a mission so during that time many crews began building ships fighters. my ex crew also developed a support ship that was made with an extra-large fuel tank and improved life support system to do the work of supplying the fighters. They built a new crew centered on ship building though they couldn’t get the help of the NPC because they abandon my crew just because of a mission.

Soon we weren’t as needed as before because there were a substantial number of ships now.

Noah: too bad we can’t make more money of these guys for protection anymore but I think we might get much more out of doing this quest.

Gunner: hahaha that’s what you’re worried about even as the current most productive miner that is all your worrying about is a riot.

Noah: heh anyway are you finally done with all the power suits you said you were trying to develop a new one for battle right.

Gunner: heh here is yours captain, I talked with that miss from the manufacturing team she was really eccentric about making the armor plating and went all out using metal to make it.

He then handed me a power suit like his own it looked similar to the metal bracers from any power suit but I could see on the side the old space suits as well as armor pieces that were all separate from the suit. Out of curiosity I scanned the suit to check its stats.

High Gravity Power Suit

A new model of power suit developed by an unknown research group. This suit was made to be used on planets with gravity levels twice that of old earth. This suit was made to increase the strength of the user by 6 times while keeping or improving the speed of the user to at least twice the original amount.

This suit was made to work with space suits for use in the vacuum of space; it is equipped with magnet boots as well as a battery that last 12 hours without charging when used just with life support and the boots.

Strength 6x

Agility 2x

Dexterity 2x

Noah: wow that’s impressive improvements for it.

Gunner: even with my expertise it’s still hard to develop a suit to handle G2 gravity without sacrificing speed.

Noah: everyone has one of these right?

Gunner: yep every last one of them, now get the space suit on I had the girly put a new layer fabric so it should be much more comfortable then we can add the armor plating you will need these to survive.

I put the space suit and like he said it was quite comfortable it attached at certain spots to provide the battery power to the suits support.

Next was the armor, I had to put the arms and legs first as it was all tight fit and was made to keep air inside. The armor was quite bulky but it was directly connected with the power suit which prevented the armor from getting in the way of our movements as much as it would have.

(http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140703204611/crossoverrp/images/4/4b/ARS_Mass_Production.jpg)

After putting the armor on he handed me a cool looking helmet which I put on. I sealed onto my head air tight after I put it on to protect me from the elements and after plugging in the interface I normally saw through my watch appeared on the screen then shrank to the side. There were a few more things like how much was remaining battery and the condition of my body, seems it can ready my vitals but that probably corresponds with the damage received though the armor.

As I look around there are many people armored up like me. I take the helmet off since we don’t need it.

Noah: alright lets go then we have a base to find and people to rescue.

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hey ive been needing bit of help i cant deside a name for the rock creatures, though Golems have come to mind since that is very Fantasy i was thinking Ore men because of the minerals they have in their body, if you have ideas please post