Derelicts
Derelicts
Summary: The ChEng and the S3 poke Sparky.
Date: 2 ACH
Related Logs: None
Players:
Rhea..Desusa..Snatch..

Locale: Engineering / Genesis

As it stands, the marine captain is trying to cnvince one of the techies in here to let him poke Sparky. Rhea has trained her men and women well, and the crewman talking to Desusa doesn't allow unauthorized people to inspect it.

Rhea strides into Engineering, looking fresh from the showers, if not a good night's sleep. An over-excited ensign jogs to meet her before she's even fully through the entrance. The kid was left in charge in her absence, and the appearance of Marines on his watch has freaked him out a little. Rhea smoothes his feathers and orders him to a console where he can be vaguely productive. Then, back to Sparky she goes. "What's all this?"

"Listen, son, I don't intend to touch it or anything in the likes, I just wanna better look…" Desusa turns his head Rhea and nods, "Captain." The crewman salutes and addresses Rhea, "Captain, I was just…" he drops the salute and adds, "Sir, Captain Desusa wants to inspect the marker, but we have strict orders not to let anyone without clearance near it." The crewman looks a bit tired from trying to convince the marine that he's not allowed further.

Rhea salutes back, nodding sharply to the tech. "Damn right you do. Good work." She turns to Desusa. "Captain. I've been meaning to pay you a call. Hope my techs weren't too rough with you. I've trained them well."

Desusa gives The Cheng a small smile-nod, "No trouble, Captain Zimmerman. I understand the need for the added security." He then clasps his hands behind his back and stands firm. "I'm all ears, Captain."

Rhea waves a hand to her techs. "It's all right. Captain Desusa can play with our little toy." The snipes shift a bit to give the captains room to prod Sparky. "We're still putting the gibberish this thing was spitting out through cryptography analysis. The buoy itself was just heavily abused. What slammed it is still something we have to figure, but it's not *too* out-of-ordinary. Whatever got fused to it, though…" She pauses, her voice heavy when she speaks again. "…metallurgy analysis shows it came from unknown sources. Possibly non-Colonial." She smirks. "Possibly some experimental hull type we haven't heard about out here yet. I was hoping it might match your Spook. Would've made things…easier. But that proved to be a negative."

Snatch has arrived.

Rhea is back by Sparky with Desusa and some techs.

Desusa nods a few times as Rhe details the findings so far on Sparky. "We never got that close to the buoys, Captain," points out Desusa with a somewhat soft voice. He doesn't sound to marine-ly when he's not barking orders. He moves around the marker and asks, "This is the impact zone, right?" He points to the small tear on the side.

"Right-o," Rhea says, kneeling down so she can look at that spot properly. And motioning for Desusa to do the same. "Looks almost like somebody took an axe to it. A very big space-axe. Which seems unlikely." She runs her small fingers along it, quiet for a moment. Before she adds, "The Pandora had some Cylon metal lodged in his outer hull when it came home. We'll need a proper analysis to tell for certain of course but…it looks an awful lot like this passenger our buoy picked up."

Desusa kneels down and follows Rhea's finger along the dent, frowning. "This is a high velocity impact. No charred metal or the likes. What ever hit this marker had one hell of a propulsion system," he sticks his finger into the gap to demonstrate. "Is this model equipped with the high potency radio amplifier, Captain?"

Snatch has not, on the whole, taken shifts tending Sparky, preferring to range the battlestar far and wide and take a selection of the variety of odd jobs presented to the Engineering department every day. So when she hustles in and sets her gear on a platform, she's probably just in to pick up another assignment or to swap out some instruments.

Rhea nods along with Desusa, doing some frowning of her own. "That's what our initial finding suggested. Looks like the buoy gave as good as she got, at least." She smirks at the bits-of-whatever that ended up fused to it. To the last question, she nods. "It's standard for Colonial border-watchers like this. It's off now, though. I had the electrical techs shut this mess down when it was hauled back." Around them, Engineering is humming along as it usually does, if with a heightened level of tension. Condition 2 isn't a daily occurrence on Genny, after all.

Snatch shares in that tension, her attention rather more firmly on her work than usual, her pace more directed and less ambling. She quickly and efficiently opens her workcase and disassembles one of the tools therein, zeroing in swiftly on the reason it's not working anymore and leaning over the table to replace a wire with nimble, capable fingers. She doesn't pause to grin at or chat with any of her fellow engine snipes. Not that anyone else is really in a chatty mood, either.

"I see." Desusa rubs his chin a bit and says, "Captain, I'll get on the level with you on this one, cause it's bound to hit your office soon," his tone drops a little more to nearly a whisper, "Before the Pandy got sabotaged a few days ago, we skirted the Arm's line to test the Phantasm on nearby asteroids. We found three more buoys failing to transmit data, but none of them got beat up like this one," he drums his knuckles over the marker's paneling. "And then, when I tried a secured-line call to HQ, I got zero response." He looks up to Snatch, who happens to be near to them, but says nothing.

Rhea gives Snatch a nod when she catches sight of the tech, but otherwise lets her get on with her work. The snipe's fiddling has a nice, routine look about it. Comforting at the moment. The buoy is less so, and she returns to frowning at it. "You think…something was mucking up our surveillance and communications out on the line? Well, that's a bet I'd take if this were a Triad game."

Snatch isn't going to spend her time listening in to business that doesn't concern her. A few of the words in her Cap'm's conversation catch her attention, but she reminds herself that being nosy isn't her job, so she re-doubles her attentions to her repairs, and, once she's satisfied that the tool is in functioning order, she heads to the whiteboard to claim another job and head out at her swift, directed condition-two pace.

Desusa glances back to Rhea and smiles wryly at her, "You sure you ain't marine intelligence, Captain Zimmermann?" He signs somewhat and adds, "Combat tactics, Captain," a small pause, "At a massive scale." He begins giving the marker another look, saying, "Whatever our enemy used to jam the other buoys didn't work with this one, so they had to clobber it to death."

Rhea snorts a laugh. "Gods, no. The spook nonsense out here makes my teeth ache. I just play with my toys." She glances over her shoulder as Snatch bustles off. Smiling faintly. Good to see some things go on as normal today. She clears her throat. "It's a logical conclusion to draw. I wonder why it didn't work, though. This is standard Colonial make. Nothing particularly special about our friend Sparky. Not on first-glance, at least. Maybe the comms tech who's poking at him will something beneath the surface."

Desusa grins and nods to the 'spook' part. "Well, cutting communications is the first part," he now moves to stand backup, taking his cap off and rubbing his bald head, "…and you sure as hades won't like to hear what follows." He seems to agree with Rhea that it's a COMMS game now, so he won't comment further on that.

Rhea tilts her head up, looking from Sparky to Marine. Her eyebrows arch a notch. "I don't like a lot of what I've heard lately, Captain. But I'm a big girl. I can roll with the punches.";

Desusa doesn't look to Rhea directly, he just focuses on the metal pieces that isn't jammed on Sparky. "Cripple movement. Severe supply lines. Bleed out." He scratches the side of his nose before looking back to Rhea. "It's all speculation right now, Captain. The Gen and the Pand are both on secret projects so comms blackouts are SOP." He shrugs a bit.

"SOP. Yeah…" Rhea mutters dryly. Nothing feels standard to her right now. "Hopefully it'll all even out in a few weeks. It's just…frak, I don't get it. Forty years of silence. Why start shaking our trees now?"

"Derelicts, Captain. Derelicts." Raul seems to settle for a nicer scenario. "Those tin cans got zero brains and a pair of them just completely lost it," he snickers to that sentence.

"Derelicts. That makes more sense than anything else," Rhea agrees. "They're machines, after all. Not like your toaster has some hot social life when you leave the kitchen. Frak, I wonder sometimes if the damn things haven't just shut themselves off. But wires get crossed sometimes. That's mechanical. Easy enough to understand."

Desusa nods in agreement to Rhea, "Well, I am glad we have come to that conclusion, Captain." The timepiece over his wrist beeps and he gives it a small inspection, "I am sorry to cut our meeting short, Captain Zimmermann." He places his cap over his head once more and asks, "I got some reports to shoot up to captain Gaelan's desk."

Rhea smirks. "I certainly feel better," she says dryly. She straightens up, nodding to Desusa. "I won't the Marines waiting. Good hunting, Captain. Drop by the shop anytime. I'll tell my snipes to be gentler with you from now on." She winks.

Desusa gives the Cheng a smart salute and begins to head out, "Oh by the way," he stops in the hatchway and says, "To show my appreciation, I am sending your way some nice Picon rum in a bit. Be sure to keep /that/ secured." He snickers and moves out.

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