Gregorys Rest
06 Jun 2018Robert Phillips
I was travelling through Chipi and detected an anomalous signal in orbit around Chipi 1 A. This was unusual - it appeared to be man-made. I dropped out of SuperCruise to investigate further and found a Listening Post.I scanned it and received the following data packet:
...Distress Beacon Signal XB9-556-A Detected...
Matches signal detected at listening posts:
(5761696b697269, 4261746172)
Approximate Signal Range: 14-17 LY
This is Lakon T9 Heavy 4653... We're going down... Long:28.5777 ...all hands brace for impact...
...Beacon Signal Lost...
It would appear that the listening post picked up a fragment of a distress signal from a ship that was crashing. There could have been survivors! Feeling a sense of duty toward doing the right thing, I decided to investigate.
The listening post's signal had been encoded in some form. It did not contain enough information by itself to locate the source of the distress signal, since it provided only half a planetary coordinate, and a signal range 14-17 LY away from my current location. That represented too many potential locations to search, but the signal contained references to 2 other signals:
• 5761696b697269
• 4261746172
At first I thought these referenced system names where the numbers represented letters of the English alphabet, as I had seen previously. However, the letter 'b' in the first reference meant this couldn't be the case.
OK - so the sequences meant something else.
There is a numbering sequence that contains letters: Hexadecimal. Assuming that this was indeed Hexadecimal, then the strings could be read as hexadecimal pairs as follows:
• 57 61 69 6b 69 72 69
• 42 61 74 61 72
But this still didn't correlate with any known alphabet.
Or did it?
Since the references were encoded using a numbering system synonymous with computers and digital programming, it was possible they referenced an alphabet or character set also used in programming. The ancient ASCII character set is a simple, low bandwidth character set that is often used when memory and/or bandwidth is limited (such as when sending an emergency signal).
If this was indeed the case, then the number sequence correlated to the following decimal positions, and hence characters, in the ASCII character table:
• 87 97 105 107 105 114 105 = Waikiri
• 66 97 116 97 114 = Batar
Now we were getting somewhere! Waikiri and Batar were both nearby star systems, 62.22 LY and 28.81 LY away respectively.
I engaged my Hyperdrive and headed to Waikiri first. Instantly upon arrival I detected a signal in orbit around the primary star, Waikiri A. This provided a similar data packet to before:
...Distress Beacon Signal XB9-556-B Detected...
Matches signal detected at listening posts:
(4368697069, 4261746172)
Approximate Signal Range: 64-66 LY
This is Lakon T9 Heavy 4653... We're going down... lat:7.2193 ...all hands brace for impact...
...Beacon Signal Interrupted...
And a another data packet from the 3rd listening post around Batar A 1:
...Distress Beacon Signal XB9-556-C Detected...
Matches signal detected at listening posts:
(5761696b697269, 4368697069)
Approximate Signal Range: 28-32 LY
This is Lakon T9 Heavy 4653... We're going down... ...6 a ...all hands brace for impact...
...Message Corrupted...
The new hexadecimal sequence (43 68 69 70 69) correlated to my original transmission in Chipi.
Now I had 3 data points from which I could triangulate the signal source. Collectively I knew I was looking for a crash site on the first moon of the 6th body of a star system that was:
• 14-17 LY from Chipi
• 64-66 LY from Waikiri
• 28-32 LY from Batar
I used my galaxy map to narrow down the search area to a small sphere of potential star systems that matched these distances. The only system that exactly matched the parameters was Koli Discii. It had a landable body at Koli Discii C 6 A, and was 16.16 LY from Chipi, 65.40 LY from Waikiri, and 29.98 LY from Batar.
I flew to the moon, and navigated to the longitude/latitude coordinates specified in the data packets.
Sure enough, at Long: 28.5777, Lat: 7.2193 I saw something! There was what appeared to be an abandoned base called Gregorys Rest. It had no power, and was under darkness, but I could just about make out several habitation modules:
This was evidently not a ship, and so couldn't have been the source of the distress signal. Nevertheless, this abandoned base still presented a mystery - what had happened to the inhabitants?
I deployed my SRV and performed a close inspection of the site. There were 5 Settlement Comms Log Uplinks present from which I was able to download the following logs.
SURVEY TEAM 43 1/5
Survey Team 43, Commander’s Log.
Ever since we saw that light show in Sector 12, Hopkins has been acting oddly. He’s become reclusive and aggressive, and to be honest I’m starting to worry about him. I think in the morning we’ ll get him checked over by the medic, make sure nothing’s wrong.
I’ve called command and requested an evac team for Hopkins. He needs medical care that we simply can’t provide.
They should only take a few days to get here, we can hold the fort till then.
SURVEY TEAM 43 2/5
Command come in we need help.
Hopkins escaped custody. He went mad, talking about some mission. He made no sense. Jenkins, Greer and Davies are all dead. We need backup now!
Damn it he’s taken out the comms! There is no way for us to contact command.
If the rescue team doesn’t hurry up there won’t be anyone to rescue.
SURVEY TEAM 43 3/5
Is this thing transmitting?
Hello? Anyone?
Control, if you read me, whatever you do, don’t come down here. It’s not safe.
He’s coming, I’ve got to go.
SURVEY TEAM 43 4/5
I don’t have long. I think he knows where I am.
There are no survivors. I’m the last one left.
My god! He’s found me!
SURVEY TEAM 43 5/5
Rescue Team 88 reporting.
We’ve found a survivor.
He’s not saying much, just mumbles about his mission. He’s in pretty bad shape and the rest of the crew didn’ t survive whatever attacked them out there.
We’ll bring him back to base. 88 out.
Madness. What had happened?
Around 2KM away, at a bearing 70 degrees, my wave scanner detected another signal. I drove over to the it's source and discovered a crashed Anaconda. It's cargo of Betrandite and Gold was trailing behind it:
Did the Anaconda send the distress signal? That would be strange, since the signal referenced a T9. So what happened to the T9? Is it still out there somewhere?
There were no signs of life that I could detect in any of the surrounding areas, so I collected the abandoned cargo and left...