Session 10 Summary
The Dire Straits, crewed only by Jithal, Chris, and Steve Irwin, traveled to the outer system to finally track down location of the possible new strait point, and stake their claim by shooting it to the unknown system on the other side.
Soon after they passed the orbit of the gas giant Cuthbert, their Grulvaxian sensors detected a ship, the DSRV Silver Minnow, just at the edge of the Dire Straits’ sensor envelope. It appeared to be moving slowly in-system, but accelerating. Their vector indicated they were probably going to skirt the star towards the Luxia strait point on the other side of the system, where they reportedly were planning on doing research into slipstream space. The Silver Minnow was last seen at Zerzi planet when the Dire Straits dropped Dohpaz Vito off at his research facility.
As the Dire Straits continued their course outwards, and the Silver Minnow continued their course inward, a third ship, the Exploration Vessel Wyvern was revealed.
The XV Wyvern is the ship of the renowned team of explorers who have discovered 2 other new strait points in the last 10 years. Their vector was outwards from the star, but not converging with the Dire Straits, nor moving directly towards the possible strait point.
The Dire Straits reached the location of the possible strait point. Their sensors indicated that it was in fact a strait point, and Jithal started the lengthy mathematics used to determine the correct navigation parameters in order to shoot the strait safely, humming quietly to himself and affecting the low powered radio devices in the ship.
Finally the calculations were completed and loaded into the nav computer. Chris sat at the pilot’s station and maneuvered the Dire Straits onto the right vector and approach. In the moments before the entered the strait, the Dire Straits’ sensors pinged… a ship was detected at the edge of the sensor envelope. The computer identified it as the XV Wyvern, just as they entered the strait, and the light of the stars stretched and brightened through the spectrum, constricting to a rainbow tunnel that changed into blinding white light.
Then they were on the other side, and Chris started the deceleration process, with Jithal and Steve Irwin, checking the passive scan boards to find out where in the galaxy they were, and what was in the system with them. There were thirty-eight active radio signals from elsewhere in the system. Four of them were from ships within their sensor envelope… those signals matched those from the unknown aliens they had fought at Cuthbert Station, one of them was a similar class to the ship they destroyed, recovered, and explored. The other three appeared to be star fighters similar to the one that Chris and Chrysalis had briefly battled. They appeared to be on a regular patrol of this part of the system.
Unfortunately, one of the star fighters was on a vector to be near enough to scan them with their sensors soon.
Jithal quickly began the calculations to shoot the strait back to Zerzi system, frantically humming the Grulvaxian Reverse Matrix Jump song, hoping to be able to jump before the unknown aliens reached them.
Chris prepped their single missile to fire on the approaching star fighter’s vector, while Steve manned the point defence lasers getting the star fighter in his sights.
As the star fighter got into the range where they estimated they would be sensed, Chris fired the missile, it streaked across space and exploded near enough to the star fighter that the explosion knocked it into a spin, star fighter parts flying away on random vectors. Steve Irwin fired the lasers at the damaged star fighter; something on the star fighter exploded, increasing its spin and sending it on a vector to the side of the Dire Straits.
In a crescendo of humming, radio pulses, and mathematics, Jithal finished the calculations to make the return shot through the strait, and sent them to the nav computer. Chris quickly re-oriented the Dire Straits to head back through the strait, while Jithal and Steve packed the data they gathered to send to the Pilot’s Guild to make their claim to discovering the strait.
The shot the strait back to Zerzi, once more through the tunnel of color and brightness, only to arrive in Zerzi system just as the XV Wyvern was on its approach to the strait point!
Both ships rolled to avoid avoid striking each other, close enough to see the other ship’s crew through their bridge windows.
Chris attached the updated ships sensor logs to the prepared message as proof of the successful shot through the strait and back, and sent the encrypted claim message to the Pilots Guild over the Tatternet.
The XV Wyvern aborted their run at the strait point, veering to the side, as Jithal? sent a message to the Wyvern that there was danger on the other side of the strait.
The Dire Straits had been in the other system for about 15 minutes. This was enough time to gather enough data to find the system’s position in the galaxy, get a feel for what was in the system, and the parameters about how to jump the strait point in both directions.