Dark Places

"Only one way to find out. Anyone taken any piloting lessons before?"

"I wouldn’t trust myself to make this machine run… but I’m willing to learn. Y’Breq, Turana- you both seem suited to decipher the mechanics of this curious vessel."

Emmett leans back against a piece of synth, wincing as he does with tired legs. It had been a far longer day than he was used to, and hadn't included any games of cards yet. Hopefully that would change.

His mind wandered for a moment while the others put the final touches on the craft. He had no idea where he was specifically, only that it was outside the planet, that which had been all of creation until this morning. His mind wandered back to the war, quiet nights with no campfire for fear of being seen and ambushed. With no hope of winning and no home to return to, he had watched the stars move as an escape. Younger Emmett had known they were other suns, any Aeon priest could tell you that, but that's all they could say. Not what lived there, or the lives they led. Not what else could be hiding in the darkness between the stars, or what may hidden on their broken and wandering moon.

And here older Emmett stands, tired from chopping those dreamt of creatures into bits. Which is only fair, considering they wanted to turn him into jerky, or belts, or whatever they did with human skin.

In any case, it was about time to discover what lay in the darkness above Young Emmett's head. He was ready, if nothing else, to rub some young Aeon's smug face in it.

He moves back to the group, dropping one end of the 'bot leg he uses as a weapon to the cavern floor. "I'll fly her. Can't be much different than leading a bunch of wagons, right? Except for, uh, no horses or nothin'. But that's just details!"

Lyle chuckles "yup- this is just like a horse and buggy." he Says rolling his eyes. "You’re as qualified as any of us, Emmett. Have at it."

"Well, I do have some experience with technological devices. I'll see if I can puzzle this out." Y'breq looks over the panels and the frame of the craft, seeing how best to assemble the ship back together.

Y'breq works out that the ship is largely automated. You can fly it manually, or you can just 'give the horse it's own lead' and it will muddle through. You can show Emmett how to do that, and get moving at any time.

Emmett, or whoever the pilot is, will need to have a piloting roll. That's an Intellect test, eased one step of your trained in piloting, but that skill isn't required.

Turana started to touch parts of the shuttle while trying to remember the different ways that she learned Numeneras can be operated , looking for any place meant for having a hand inside or on it, like levers or buttons and seeing if those would somehow point to a specific parts of the ship. in case they needed to resort to a manual navigation mode, also being careful not to ignite anything by mistake.. while saying "I agree with rest of the guys Emmet, i think that you are the one with most experience here, hopefully the rest of can decypher how this thing would operate in greater detail to improve our chances of getting out of here.

"This is exciting! Oh, and completely dangerous. Once we get this wagon train going we should check in with Cooper, right? I mean- if we can get by these five armed demons." Lyle says. He is clearly nervous about the whole venture and it is making him chatty.

Speaking of XP, I should award some. Numenera is a game of exploration, so you gain xp through discovery.

Each of you can take 4 xp, for:
- discovering the portal in the mine
- learning about Cooper and something of his role
- discovering the quintpod hive
- rebuilding the entirely don't-worry-if-its-airtight, safe-as-houses leaky spaceship.

Speaking of exploration, Jaz will want to try and create a starmap, hopefully to create a cross refrence to triangulate location.
Assuming Cooper doesnt know where we are.
It's probably more of a long term goal?

Oh! I'm going to use Scan on the ship, hopefully that will tell us any neededinfo and possibly if there are any holes?Also. We are bringing the crystal with us, yes?

Emmett glances sideways at her, a sarcastic smile on his face.. "I'm gonna let that slight against my age go, just this once."

He approaches the panel, hoping that the knowledge for how to pilot a spacecraft will leap magically into his mind.

He looks back at the others. "Anything else to do before we got the road?"

Jaz: The amount of data available on the ship is astounding, but most importantly, you learn that the ship has massive power reserves, and can easily power the gate as well as get you home, which is indescribably far away. It also maintains a series of protective fields, so the craft will be safe and warm for you inside even with holes in the sides of the craft.

The ships power is set into a kind of low energy mode at the moment, but Emmett familiarizes himself with the controls and enables it to return to full function. He figures out how to navigate it using the controls. It's nearly fully automated, so he need only instruct it what to do. It also seems to have a helper utility that has been switched off.

While Jaz discusses whether or not (and how) to move the crystal onboard, Emmett pokes around the cockpit's strange controls. Some seem to make perfect sense, others do nothing, and one that he jabs with a finger seems to jab back with what looks like a needle, drawing blood before retracting.

"Shadow and flame, that hurt damn you!" He swats at the console, which still blinks impassively. He continues searching the readouts before finding a friendly looking face (or a symbol that appears to be a face). He sucks on his bleeding finger while pressing it with the other hand, hopefully doing something that will help.

Turana smiles at the view of Emmet swearing at the ship "Hey it seems to like your pilot skills and wants a taste of you, so whenever you feel ready, i guess this kind of tech might take care of opening a door somewhere, by the way i have a cypher that as far i could understand it, it will create and enclosed habitat , in case we have a pressure leak into the vacuum or something"

The helper activates on a forward screen. From the front console, there starts a bunch of squealing as if hundreds of sounds play simultaneously, crashing into electronic noise, and then running into just human sounding languages, dozens of them overlaid. In seconds the bulk of them drop out leaving three, then two, and finally a single language, one you all can understand.

"What did you j-holes do to my body? J-holes? What does that even mean? Ugh, are you barbarians from the nosepicker tribe? Shoo!"

"Well, for one we kept you from being scrap. Woild you prefer the alternative?"

The animated but mostly featureless icon on the display says, "Not easilty shooed huh? Hey, meathead don't scracth the paint crashing into the cave walls. How the hell did I get up here? How did you get up here? Why is there a piece of power sucking tech welded to my ass?"

The Assistant complains for a while, but between it and Emmett, you move the craft up into the air, then out into the main cave. The quintpod colony goes berserk and begins trying to swat you down. They can do little, but you're not waiting for them to work something out.

The craft easily darts toward the open space, and you burst through a protective bubble, air leaking behind you before it is sealed.

The inside of the craft immediately flashes alarms, as the poorly attached panels bow out, your ears popping in the small but sudden loss of pressure before a flickering energy field activates around the walls. The Assistant continues its rant as you wheel about.

"Good thing that force field still works or I would have lost my nosepicker tribe," he says with dripping sarcasm.

Throught he front screen, you see that you're floating in nothingness. All you can see are stars, and then as it turns, the quintpod rock. That is, just a rock the size of a mountain floating in the infinite black before the curtain of stars that seems to be in every direction. The sun is now behind you, and you can see your shadow flicker across the sunward side of the rock-mountain.

"So where does the nosepicker tribe reside? What planet are you from?"

"Earth. Where are you from? How did you get to this rock in the middle of nowhere?" Y'breq is simultaneously thrilled and terrified that their dangerous journey is so far from home, and what amazing technology this craft is.