YE/E02 - SS Lord Franklin

[GM-01]

The Away Team materialised within the Lord Franklin's Control Room, the largest space available that the transporters could lock on to. Tricorder readings would indicate that the air was breathable, but it was warm and stale, as if it hadn't been properly recycled in years. The occasional wheeze from the ventilation ducts indicated the reason; the life support system had never been intended to run for centuries, and was likely on its last legs.

Dim illumination was provided by a handful of still-functioning emergency lights, requiring those without decent night-vision to use flashlights to get a good look. The layout of the control room was indicative of her origins as a converted submarine; a helm station complete with control yoke and ancient dials indicating depth, heading, and speed; weapons and countermeasures stations that had been haphazardly repurposed as additional sensor readouts, and a sonar station that now seemed to function as the primary sensor station. All sensors except visual appeared to be offline. There was, perhaps surprisingly to 25th century sensibilities, no dedicated chair for the Captain. What there was, however, was a seemingly fully-functional periscope system, which if tested would display real-time readouts from the ship's visual sensors.

Access to the lower compartments was by a hatch at the back of the Control Room, which would prove surprisingly heavy given its relatively small size. The ladder descended through another compartment, past a hatch that had been left open, and ending two decks down. Students of history or engineering would remember that on most DY-series ships, the middle deck contained the Engine Room and docking and escape hatch; the lower deck contained crew berthing, cargo bay, and a maintenance tunnel to the reactor and engineering spaces.

Careful examination of the area around the hatch would reveal a brass placard had fallen from the bulkhead and was caught between it and the nearest bulkhead. The details were covered by dust, but brushing off the outer layer would reveal the following:

[HMCS Lord Franklin. Dreadnought-class SSBN. Launched 2040.]

The dates would put the Franklin's launch in the middle of Earth's Third World War, something that had not been mentioned in any of the history books. Knowledge of whether she had been converted and launched during hostilities or following them had been lost to history, unless the data still existed in the Franklin's primitive computer system.

[Jennifer Braggins]

When she materialised, Jenny was immediately aware of just how small and cramped the area they had materialised in was; if she'd chosen to take a larger team, or they'd chosen to wear EV suits, moving would be difficult at best. Even with just the four of them, it seemed like they were taking up the majority of the usable space in the room. Though her enhanced vision quickly adjusted to the dull red glow of the emergency lights, she activated her flashlight anyway and let its beam of harsh white light pan across the room.

We're spoiled in the 25th century. I've seen equipment lockers bigger than this!

Air, warm and stale, was slowly circulating around the room, accompanied by an asthmatic wheezing sound that indicated the Life Support system wasn't in the best of shape. If the ship was to be salvaged, that would need to be repaired. The respirator masks the Away Team wore would keep them supplied with "fresh" breathing air for a few hours, but any extended stay aboard the Lord Franklin would either require a larger supply of masks, or a working supply of air.

"Altairi, your first job is to try and get Life Support running properly. If memory serves it'll be on the lower deck. Sara, you'll assist him; we'll need air if we're going to work here. I also want both of you to report on the status of any cryo-pods you come across."

Moving around the Control Room, Jenny let her hand very gently brush against the ancient consoles. Analog displays, manual switches, it was unlike anything she'd seen outside of a museum, and even most museum pieces she'd seen still had digital systems. The old-style wheel and yoke at what she assumed was a pilot's station stirred something nostalgic as she remembered her own time as a "stick jockey", and she allowed herself a small smile behind her mask.

"Arwen, I want you to try and interface with the computers; anything you can tell us about where this ship was going, or how it got here, would be great."

It was the first time she'd called Qi by his given name since he'd reported aboard, and was a sign of her growing comfort with him. Department Heads had been something of an issue for Jenny, even going back so far as the Gettysburg, and Science Officers especially so. Qi was one of the most enthusiastic and competent scientists she had met, lacking the ego or lab-centric attitudes that so often plagued experts in that field, hopefully this one would stay.

Continuing to pan across the room, Jenny paused as she turned and faced the centre; hanging from the ceiling was a cylindrical construct encircled by a metal wheel. Reaching up, and having to stand on her tiptoes to do it, Jenny grasped and with some effort shifted the metal wheel to the left. There was a dull clunk, followed by a hiss of ancient pneumatics, and she barely concealed a squeal of delight as the Franklin's periscope descended into position. Pulling the handles on either side of the assembly down, Jenny leaned into the view piece and was immediately assailed with data. Superimposed over the starfield display provided by the visual sensors were telemetry links from the functional sensor systems; too many of them were indicated as being offline or displaying error messages, but she could gauge the ship's current velocity and rate of orbital decay based on what she was being shown.

With a mischievous smirk on her face, Jenny shuffled her feet and panned the periscope around. As she'd hoped, the sensors moved with the periscope, and she paused as she focused the visual sensors on the Yeager, hovering at a safe distance. With a soft sigh, Jenny took the moment to gaze upon her new command, as beautiful as she was ungainly; she'd never been able to see her following her completion, but she felt the same rush of exhilaration as she'd done the first time she'd seen the Artemis.

Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made, for somewhere deep in their oaken hearts the soul of a song is laid...

[Arwen Qi]

Qi watched as the captain swept the bridge with her flashlight. A delicate tension hung in the air, like static before lightning. The Franklin’s various stations and instruments cast strange long shadows. He thought back to a night in his misspent youth when he and Lumis had snuck into a science museum after dark. Under the harsh security lights, the familiar exhibits looked like they might wake up at any moment.

"Arwen, I want you to try and interface with the computers; anything you can tell us about where this ship was going, or how it got here, would be great." The captain said, examining a periscope that hung from the ceiling.

Qi nodded, stepping lightly. He was an intruder here, but he meant to harm. As he approached one of the consoles, a rectangular plaque clattered at his feet. He bent over to pick it up.

[HMCS Lord Franklin. Dreadnought-class SSBN. Launched 2040.]

Qi read the words aloud to the away team with wonder.

“Strange that this never came up in my research,” he added. “So it was presumably returned and converted for space travel some time between 2040 and its disappearance in 2155.”

Did this have anything to do with the ship’s disappearance? He didn’t see how. Not yet.

Qi wiped a layer of dust from one of the ship’s terminals. He liked the more tactile nature of older interfaces, though he’d never used one outside the holodeck. He hoped that that the ship’s computers had held up better than some of its other systems. Even if the terminals themselves didn’t work, he could download much of the data to his tricorder, provided it hadn’t degraded too badly.

== Tag Away Team
GM Input: what is Qi able to learn about the ship’s mission/most recent activity in the computers? ==

[GM-01]

The computer stirred slowly (by 25th century standards), its ancient technology struggling to function on reduced power. Though there seemed to be some damage and/or corruption to the older mission logs and sensor history, the most recent logs were intact, though text-only.

In the entries, the Lord Franklin's Captain, a Walter Lockley, described in full his theft of the Franklin from its drydock and a secret rendezvous with a group of isolationists whose cause he supported. Led by Sociologist and Political Scientist Liam Kiernan, they had adopted a mentality that Earth's continued mingling with alien species would invite war and devastation that would destroy the Earth, and wipe out Humanity. Lockley had agreed to give Kiernan use of his ship to escape the Sol system and found a hidden colony that would survive the oncoming apocalypse.

In his final entry, Lockley described the safe activation of the Lord Franklin's cryogenic system, and signed off with the hope that his next entry would be from orbit of their new home.

[Arwen Qi]

Qi shook his head in disgust as he read the logs. Walter Lockley and his crew had left their home and destroyed their own lives, all because they were blinded by fear. They were no better than Qi’s family on Trill. At least these humans wore their bigotry on their sleeve, rather than hiding it behind a facade of politeness.

“Human separatists after all,” Qi grumbled, disappointed. “I’m tempted to say that they bought the ticket, so they should take the ride. Fortunately for them, the galaxy has evolved beyond that kind of primitive vindictiveness. Now let’s get them out of here before the Cardassians blow us up for trespassing.”

Qi searched the ship’s systems for information on the cryogenic pods, drumming his fingers on the screen of the old console as the information slowly printed to the screen.

== Tag away team

GM Input: What is the status of the pods? Can the crew be safely transported to our own pods in the cargo bay once it’s set up? ==

[Altairi Hydish]

As a child, he'd toured the corridors of an ancient warship, a battlecruiser built at the height of Ktaris's period of pre-warp global warfare. He still had a vivid memory of the feeling that'd followed him across the upper deck, through the turret stations, and onto the bridge: a strange tug from each of the bulkheads, pulling him in all directions, all while a low drone lingered around his ears, threatening a headache as the guide led him deeper into the ship.

“Can you hear that?” He’d asked his father.

“Hear what?” Came the reply.

It was with his dive into the Omarion Nebula that Altairi finally understood what had been bothering him all those years ago. It’d been the same thing that was bothering him now.

As his hand brushed absentmindedly over the rim of an abandoned scanner station, he could sense the ghosts wandering the deck. They weren’t the ghosts of the dead– if there even were any aboard– but rather afterimages, fragments of memories that had survived centuries of neglect.

"Altairi, your first job is to try and get Life Support running properly. If memory serves it'll be on the lower deck. Sara, you'll assist him; we'll need air if we're going to work here. I also want both of you to report on the status of any cryo-pods you come across."

He turned to face Braggins, sweeping her flashlight across the cabin, a part of him thankful that she’d snapped him out of his trance.

“On it, ma’am.” He lifted his hand off the console and sent a quick nod Midshipman Kiernan’s way. “I guess you’re with me.”

The rear access hatch clattered to the floor. Altairi grimaced. He hadn’t expected it to be that heavy.

He took a moment to clip his kit to his belt, then another to peer down the ladder. Altairi bit his lip. He’d traveled down a far darker Jefferies Tube only hours earlier, but there was something uniquely spooky about the two-deck drop into a room presumably filled with ancient cryopods.

Ancient human cryopods. He brushed a hand nervously over the ridges on his forehead. They’d already caused him enough grief from the children on Ktaris…

Please don’t wake up.  Please don’t wake up.

His hand wrapped a little too tightly around the first rung, and only a little less around the second. He could hear the ghosts getting louder.

== Tag Kiernan. So sorry about the wait ==
== GM Input: What does the team find on the lower deck? ==

[Jennifer Braggins]

Jenny backed away from the periscope as she heard Arwen retrieving something from the floor and starting to speak. The name was that of the ship, so he'd obviously found her commissioning plaque, but the registry and launch date did not match Jenny's expectations. Moving over to where her Science Officer stood,, Jenny lightly relieved him of the metal plate and let her fingers run over the lettering.

“Strange that this never came up in my research. So it was presumably returned and converted for space travel some time between 2040 and its disappearance in 2155.”

It hadn't come up in Jenny's research either, but it made sense; most DY-series ships had been converted from submarines, mostly while still under construction but more than one had reputably been converted after decommissioning as warfighting vessels. Had the Franklin been one of those? Given her commissioning number, Jenny had to assume so.

"I can't say I'm surprised, we don't have a lot of reliable information about the time surrounding Earth's Third World War. Also look here, Dreadnought-class S-S-B-N; the Franklin was a Ballistic Missile Submarine, at some point she would have carried up to a dozen missiles, each with half a dozen or so nuclear warheads aboard."

Maybe she even fired some of the shots that almost ended mankind...

Standing silently with the commissioning plaque for a moment, Jenny was still aware of Hydish and Kiernan descending into the bowels of the ship and Qi interfacing with the computer. Judging by the tone of his voice, he wasn't particularly pleased by what he had discovered. It was odd, given that's what his theory had been, how many scientists in the universe disliked being proven right? Perhaps Qi was not your average scientist.

“Human separatists after all. I’m tempted to say that they bought the ticket, so they should take the ride. Fortunately for them, the galaxy has evolved beyond that kind of primitive vindictiveness. Now let’s get them out of here before the Cardassians blow us up for trespassing.”

Moving to stand beside him and look at the same records he was viewing, Jenny's eyes narrowed on names and tried to wrack her brain for whether or not she'd ever read about these people; her memory, while enhanced, was still a step short of eidetic (though it was near-enough), and names were a particular weakness. Frowning as she continued to read, Jenny couldn't help but feel like she agreed with Qi's initial assessment; these people had tried to leave the known galaxy behind, who was she to drag them back kicking and screaming? Then again, the ship had broadcast a distress call, which meant she was legally and morally obliged to do just that if the situation called for it.

"I wouldn't be so sure about the primitive vindictiveness; even in Starfleet, when you get that third solid pip, things start to get political and the hatchets start being hidden behind backs. Plus, to be fair to these people, the mid-2150s weren't the best time for Earth; Starfleet had only been exploring deep space for a year, and then the Xindi show up and all but destroyed Florida, promising to finish the job with a bigger weapon. Vulcan extremists blew up Earth's embassy on Vulcan. Then tensions with the Romulans start building. All of this less than a century after the end of the Third World War. If I was living on Earth during this time and wanted to assure the safety of my family, I'd probably consider hijacking a ship and running for the starts as well!"

[GM-01]

==Qi==

As far as Qi could determine, all of the pods were functioning within normal parameters. However, the computer did note that there had been interruptions to the power supply on several occasions, and that the entire cryogenic system was operating on minimal power.

Transporting the inhabitants out of the pods and into new pods was a very risky move. It would be far safer to transport the pods themselves and get them hooked up to the Yeager's power systems. Each pod should have its own emergency battery, which would allow such a transfer, but given the power interruptions recorded on the computer, that might not be possible in some cases.

==Hydish==

Hydish and Kiernan would have to walk past several dozen pods to get to the life support equipment at the bow of the ship, just behind the sensor dome. The cryo-room was chilly and a layer of mist clung to the deck. The pods themselves seemed to hum with life-sustaining energy, but the occupants inside were hidden by a century of ice crystals forming on the transparent parts of the tubes.

The life support system was, in short, a mess. It looked as though it had been hastily repaired at some point in the past, and that repair was failing. The system audibly wheezed as it circulated air around the ship, and several tears in the ductwork connected to the system suggested that a lot of the air wasn't being circulated at all.

Perhaps most worrying, were they not all wearing respirators, was the state of the filters; they were long-since clogged with a thick brown gunk, and the fact any air was being passed through it was nothing short of a miracle.