2. Dark Spaces

Giving your farewell to the Craadians, you withdraw your craft from their hangar and return to the void. Out in the black, a billion miles from anything, you travel along and then find a place to park the craft.

When you're ready, you activate the portal and find your way back to Cooper's strange technological habitat. He awaits for you there.

"Welcome back once again."

Emmett gags as he walks out of the portal. He found it somehow left a taste of old mushrooms in his mouth. He hated mushrooms.

"Hey boss. Lookin' like we're a bit more than halfway done with the shipment. Figured it might be a good idea to check the last portal before we finish her up. Them Craadians ain't half bad, nothin' to worry about. The buggers fightin' 'em were a bit of a pest, though. Damn near singed my hair off with those energy rays or whatever they were. Pirates, apparently. Anything you feel like we oughtta know before we mash the button and check out our last stop?"

"It also seems we have taken care of the quintapod threat, but may need to finish exploring the other portal ... doorways?" then he pauses
"Though... I think we told you all that last time we were here..."

Cooper processes the comments for a moment, taking longer than usual to formulate a reply. "Very good. If the Craadians have access to the portal, then we need their assurances that they will not use it to infiltrate the mine below Cooperstown, and from it, the town. If they plan on coming through even for peaceful reasons, then we will need to explain to the townsfolk what has changed. Remember, they do not know that the mining they are doing is actually beyond a portal to a metal rich asteroid far away from their planet."

After going through the portal on the ship Turana waited until the others finished talking :"Speaking of assurances or agreements i think we can convince the craadians its better to be in good standing with us, that way we can keep doing "Jobs" for them"

"I agree, I think we should tell them. What they do with the information is up to them, but they need to know the truth. but.... there's still the issue of what appears to be an accidentally shared mine.
If the Craadians respect right of first possession then we may have a claim to the asteroid. But we don't know enough to know that's how they think. "

Cooper says, "The reason that the mine was kept a secret was to prevent word from getting out to the broader world. It is not unthinkable that an armed force would attempt to seize the town and its apparent wealth. As to the asteroid, please note that there are two separate asteroids. The first is the mine that we've been digging in for some time, and the second is the one in which the Craadians have found another portal. The metallic wealth of our mine will be attractive to them."

Emmett sits for a long moment, stroking his beard with his good hand, his natural hand.

"We only got the two doors left. One goes to whatever asteroid the ore comes out of. The other goes to a Craadian-held mine. Which one do we wanna check out first?"

He waits to hear from the rest of the group.

"I think..." Jaz pauses and sighs. "I think we take care of what we have first. Need to check back in with town, then maybe deal with the Craadians in the other asteroid with the portal. Or disable the portal?"

"The townspeople should be put at their ease- wouldn't want them sending a search party after us. If we check in with them we can at least give them a report then continue to investigate this puzzle.." Lyle says, scratching his head.

Yeah i guess letting the people in town know that we are taking care could prevent someone curious finding out what Cooper wanted to keep secret for the good reasons he explained before, then we might want to check the asteroid where our comunnity mines the ore, who knows , there might be a breach somewhere allowing things to get outside or inside it. if the second asteroid has only been used by the Craadians, we might let them have it and close the portal to prevent unforseen problems or keep it open after talking with them and proposing an agreement what will benefit both parties.

You tune the portal to Cooperstown Mine, and file through. As before, lightning chases around the edges and you're suddenly under the powerful gravity of the planet. You stomp you boots, maybe, fighting the increased weight on your feet. When you have your wits about you, you return to the surface.

At the top of the adit, you find the foreman sleeping with a spear in his hand, while two miners sit on the ground. The sunshines in through a roof hatch, and they're dicing in the small square of light.

"I'll take some of that action, boys!" Lyle laughs. "How about that- gone for a little while and the town sinks to debauchery." He winks at the men.

Lyle is welcomed into the game. "You don't look like you've been digging ore? Where you been down there?"

Turana was about to exclaim "It's nice to be back home for while!" as she was coming after Lyle, when she realized someone was there already making questions.. Since on the town she was known for someone into Numenera scrapping and investigation she decided to jump in the conversation "We were exploring to see if there was some Ancient device there and if it could be doing something weird"