under the ice

BACKGROUND

once colonies on other planets were established, the archaic way of determining the date was abondoned. if it was kept, however, the date would be December 3, 17444 when they finally drilled through the ice on "Artica", a moon of the gas planet "Saphire." the drill was not much different than that of an oil rig from the 21st century, and there were only about 100 people who worked on the drill. the last message sent from that drill was "we did it, we broke through, and we sent down the submersible, but it is picking up some very strange signals down from under the ice. we will send more info when we figure out what it is."

3 months later, there was still no word from them after that last message. a team was sent down from the closest orbiting space station to see why they stopped sending messages. all they found were bodies. this was on the news for months afterward, but what wasn't was on the news was that they brought several of the bodies back to the station to perform autopsies on. and what also wasn't on the news was that the drill started sending messages again, in the form of that same strange signal the submersible picked up months before.

NOTABLE MOONS:

Artica, similar to jupiter’s moon Europa is an ocean planet covered in ice. Its atmosphere is 99% co2 Scientists were drilling into it just to see what was under its surface

Amazon, the only moon that did not need to be terraformed. It has an extremely thick atmosphere and the air pressure at its sea level is 5.2 atm. It is covered in swamps and rainforests and produces 92% of the agriculture for the sapphire lunar system

Vulc, as its name suggests is extremely volcanic. The terraformation of the moon is incomplete, but it is livable, for the most part. At its equator it can get above the boiling point of water, but its north and south poles are somewhat temperate. It is mostly desert, with some lakes and savanna biomes at the north and south poles

New Hawaii, named so because 98% of the moon’s surface is covered in seawater. It was originally covered in ice similar to artica but was terraformed because there was actually landmass poking out of the ice. It is entirely composed of island chains and isolated islands. Almost 100% of every island is colonized so each island is governed like a city

SPACESHIP CLASSES

transport, not powerful enough to even go between moons. only for short range transport between space stations and planets, or around planets themselves

lunar, can fly between moons and binary planets in a matter of hours. can be used to fly from planet to planet in a solar system if they are close together, but may take weeks or months to do so.

Solar, these still cannot move faster than the speed of light but can go a significant portion of it making it the best class to travel between planets.

galactic, these spaceships are practically cities themselves and massively warp space time to go from system to system. it takes weeks or months to get from one system to another, but these ships make it doable

Warp gates, these allow solar class ships to move between systems and quite literally act as a bridge from system to system. this makes interstellar travel easier, but sometimes one of the two gates break down destroying everything moving through it at the time

"did you finish replacing it?"
"yes i replaced it. next time you rent an apartment make sure the pipes can handle your urine"
stuff like this was common for John Wolf. being a plumber on a space station meant that all kinds of aliens lived on it, and some had urine so acidic or basic that it melted through the standard pipes on the station over time and special pipes needed to be installed so that they didnt corrode. those special pipes were extremely expensive however, so most never installed them. on space stations there was almost no middle class, only poor or rich, but John was an exeption. he was a specialty plumber, one that worked on potentially hazardous piping, so he gets paid a good amount, but not enough to be "rich" more "lower middle class".

John rode the elevator down to the 3rd street level, and got in his car. these cars are not like the ones you or I know, more like bumper cars at an amusement park. the wheels absorb electricity from the street to power it so that the tunnels and corridors of the station didnt get filled with exhaust. they were also different in that they were self driving, so john just plugged in his adress and the car moved on its own. it was a cheap car, but more than most could afford, almost everyone took the train, so the streets were almost never busy.

it was getting late, so john dozed off while the car drove itself, so he didnt realize it started glitching until it was almost too late. a t-junction was coming up and the car was about to slam right into a wall. john jumps awake and acts. what does he do?

>jump out of car and roll on the street
>pull the emergency brake (50% chance of working)

Pull the brake

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>1297466

>>1297472
technically i am the one thats supposed to roll because if three people all chose pull brake and all rolled there would be 3 different numbers, but i will take this dice roll if you want or i will roll my own if you want

>1-2
>1 was rolled
>1 is in lower half
>did not brake in time

SMASH
the car has some amazing technology in it. magnetic wheels to stop the wheels faster, an energy shield and momentum absorbing capabilities, but none of those worked. the only things that did were the emergency brake (not soon enough pulled), his seat belt, and the airbags. the car was still moving about 40mph when it hit the wall. luckily, pulling the emergency brake locked his seatbelt before the crash, but it didn't stop bones from breaking.

its not like they were snapped in half, just cracked, but two of his ribs, one of his finger bones, and his wrist on his left hand broke.

John wasn't knocked out, but was too much in shock and pain to notice the car had slammed right into someone. this person did not survive the crash. her spine was snapped and head was smashed into the wall. she was dead seconds after she was hit.

this was a good thing

otherwise john would be dead too.

the paramedics arrived, but their car started glitching too. luckily THEY were able to pull their brake quicker than John and only bumped into his car at 3 miles an hour.

faintly, john heard someone say "no not again" and he looked up to see blood.

its just, it wasnt straight red or blue or green like most species, but pinkish.

the paramedics eventually got another ambulance to come and pick up john. they took him to the epsilon sector hospital to get treated and he had two treatment options:

normal methods, get a cast and a sling and wait weeks for the wounds to heal

or use nanobots to heal his bones within hours.

>traditional method (cheap, takes a long time, uncomfortable)
>nanobots (extremely quick, extremely expensive, WILL put John into debt)

>>1297600
>>traditional method (cheap, takes a long time, uncomfortable)

>traditional method chosen

"raga shi muku"

"no. it does NOT cost $10,000 it costs $100,000"

"Ka shimi fla noma!"

"i know it's ridiculous, but i don't control the price of it, just sign here"

weeks had passed since the crash. for the most part everything had healed, except his finger still needed a cast. he had gone back to work just in time to not be fired for his absence, but it had still hurt to breathe when he did get back on the job.

Multiple times he had wondered whether or not it would have been worth it to just simply use nanobots to heal him. nanobots could do amazing things, reconstruct bones, initiate cell growth, recconect nerves, Hell they could even be used to regrow lost limbs or prevent aging. the oldest human alive was more than 400 years old thanks to nanobots, but it could cost a millions, or even billions, the the case of the oldest living man, to use them.

as for his car, he had sold it for scrap. its not that it was damaged from the crash, but practically every electronic component in it was fried, almost like it had gotten hit by an EMP. He could't afford another car because car insurance was a thing of the past after they became self-driving. the amount of car crashes had gone down by a factor of 4 after human driving was no longer allowed except for special circumstances, and even then, most of the crashes were from those few people who actually COULD drive their own cars. john also never got a warranty for his car, so he never got a new one. after the crash he instead took the tramway to get around the station.

the trams were always crowded, and i mean overcrowded, practically no room to move around in the tramcar. there were several problems with this, if you were claustrophobic, you were screwed, sickness was easily transferable, and if an alien with poison barbs or hyper acidic blood were to poke or bleed on you on accident, you would have to be taken to the hospital.

the tram doors opened at a tram stop not far from john's apartment when he saw the lights at the station flickering. all around the station, things had been breaking down at an increasing rate, almost all of them electrical. cars, trains, air conditioning units, bulkhead doors, you name it, and there was no explanation of why.

John got nervous.

File: dlishten.png (15KB, 400x400px) Image search: [Google]

15KB, 400x400px

John walked off the tram. its not like when you buy your ticket, you pay for it immediately, its more like ez pass where you make an account, you get on at one station, get off at another, and your account is charged for the distance.

this station was not very crowded, maybe only 20 sentients (a name for any human or alien that is sentient, it has the same meaning as "people", except it doesnt just apply to humans) at the station. all of the sentients he saw got on the tram, but john was the only one to get off. he started walking towards the exit before he heard a loud cough. he turned and saw a dlishten. these creatures were like furry snakes with legs. poisonous fangs and sharp claws. despite their apperance, they were, for the most part, laid back and friendly, like teddy bears, but this one looked odd. it was drooling greenish liquid and was extremely thin and was looking down at the ground, seemingly dazed. it was obviously very very sick.

another strange thing was that it was standing in the dark. all the lights above it were not working and the lights closer to it were flickering more than the ones further away.

the tram started up and started to leave, but as it passed the dlishten, the lights in the tram cars flickered and went out as they passed by the dlishten. not far down the track, the tram slowly came to a halt, not even a tenth of the way to the next station.

It was just john, the dlishten, and the flickering lights.

John broke into a cold sweat. he could hear his own heartbeat. there was no reason for him to be scared, and yet he was. he didn't know what to do

>run away
>back away slowly toward the exit
>stand still, silent
>go to the station entrance and tell someone about the tram
>ask if the dlishten needs help