Event: Target Zone (Day T-1, Afternoon, Briefing Room)

[Dr. Reinhardt]

"berry Eclaires? That sounds delightful"

[Lucretzia Winters]

Lucretzia allowed the culinary distribution, and then set her coffee cup down on the rim of the holotank with an audible clunk.

"Now that we're settled, we are ready to begin."

Setting down the files, she tapped the holotank and brought up the image of the planet.



"As I mentioned before, there are three primary leads, and we'll need to decide which one we want to focus on first. We've found out a little more about the surface, from orbital imagery, and now we can see that there appears to be some sort of mining installation along the edges of the mountains - it's massive, and I mean that. It's located on the edge of Tartarus, on flat bog land just south of the mountain ranges which cover the land bridge between Tartarus and Asphodel."

She tapped the map to show a series of massive industrial plants, mostly hidden by the clouds, with long pipelines traced between them and vanishing off into the cloud covered mainland of Tartarus.

"It seems like there are two main settlements, one in the mountains, likely tied to the mining, and then another on the northwest coast of Asphodel. It looks like a gathering point for farmers and herdsmen - we've picked up dozens of hamlets. Very rural and agrarian, barely industrialized at all. The control tower was located in this northern settlement - though we've since been pinged by another in the southern camp. I get the impression that they aren't a unified effort."

Rolling her eyes, she then rotated the orb, showing the southern continent of Limbo, a vast wasteland of ice, mountainous, trapped in a perpetual cycle of twilight. "There's no land route from Limbo to the other continents, so if we set down here to investigate the aberrant readings from our scout probe, we'd be forcing the Calico to ferry us across world for other investigations. So we either finish in one area or negotiate with the locals for a ride... if they have any functional aircraft."

She sounded skeptical.

"I can give you the raw data of these anomalies to examine later, but we've already gone over them a dozen times, and there isn't much else there we haven't already found. There just isn't enough to work with yet - it gives us questions, but it doesn't give us answers."

That, clearly, did not please her.

"Any questions so far, before I explain the leads in detail?"

[Jan Novak]

It didn't sound too protein-rich to Jan.

"Vodka. Black coffee. What do you have?"

Then, he listened.

"Ice sounds good. As does raw data. I'd have a look. Especially anything on atmospheric density and composition, and on the magnetic field. Seismics, tectonics, ice sheet measurements. Some samples for half-life, C-14 or whatever. This kind of thing. Might project back how the world had been like before glazing, and what part of the land hadn't been frozen."

[Dr. Reinhardt]

Dr Reinhardt holds his questions till after the targets are explained in detail.

[Colette Rupelle]

Colette brought a mug with hard Irish coffee decorated with a rocket. "Here you go... I hope you enjoy it."

[Jan Novak]

"Yeah, thanks." He nodded sharply while taking the mug. He was partial to unembellished caffeine intake but any would do. French folk had their own proclivities. A rocket was a nice touch though. Jan had a soft spot for anything with impressive propulsion.

[Lucretzia Winters]

"Well, we can assume the shift in temperature is, at least partly, something we can blame on the protracted nuclear bombardment that took place across most of Tartarus. It was bad enough that there are indications the tectonic plate was shattered, breaking it into a half dozen smaller plates constantly smashing into one another - active volcanos have cropped up across the continent."

She highlighted the map and zoomed in, switching the view to a thermal scan where several hot spots were visible from orbit.

"The planet doesn't quite match the old charts, either, so we think it was knocked into a slightly further orbit than before, which would also trend toward a global cooling. Surface temperatures trend between -73 C and 16 C, with a few hot spots around the volcanic zones."

Pulling up additional fields, a number of indicators from the scans were placed to the side of the planet, for Jan to copy down if he wished.

"As for the three leads, here is what we currently know."

Now the planet split into three views, each zoomed in to a different area.

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1: The first screen shows the ice fields of Limbo, massive glacial bodies, seemingly formed by centuries of snow and freezing rain across a mountainous region, creating a massive frozen mountain range, uneven and treacherous, in the center of the continent, and frigid tundra trapped in permafrost along the edges which touched the warmer ocean waters. Amid the mountain peaks to the west, a small collection of readings, magnetic, thermal, refractory, etc... indicated a high concentration of rare and heavy metals, unusual as the remaining territory was either too blanketed in snow, or otherwise mineral poor, to be detected by orbital scanning. The region was too uneven to land the Calico safely, so the nearest valid dropsite had been marked, half a day away at a mech's pace, provided the path was clear.

2: The second screen shows the rolling hills and scrubby fields of Asphodel, dotted with small farms and homesteads, with the occasional village interspersed among them. They covered the northernmost edge of the continent with a large and pronounced gap in human settlements between those small outposts and the mining installations at the bottom edge of the continent near Tartarus. There is no clearly marked landing site, but a garbled message is displayed alongside this view, indicating that the origin of the ghost signal is somewhere in this territory. There is a single larger town, on the northwest coast, but otherwise no real clues on offer.

3: The third screen shows the storm wracked, hot and frigid hellscape of Tartarus. A land made of equal parts swamp and volcanic wasteland, with irradiated plant life thriving around the fertile volcanic soil, surrounded by dead marshes decaying away, there are several 'former city' sites marked, along with the massive mining complexes which are nestled in the bottom end of the mountains which comprise the land bridge between the two continents. A clear landing spot was marked halfway through the mountain range - far enough north that the meters no longer detected substantial levels of radiation, but close enough that trips would be possible, provided they could find a clear path. The cities were split, one near the mountain range, only a day's journey, and the other in the distant southwest. There were landing zones marked near each, but both have notable radiation warnings.

-------------------

Lucretzia leaned back. "Any thoughts? I believe there are possibilities on all three continents, we're trying to make sense of some mixed old and new data... but this world once belonged to the Rim World's Republic in the height of its power... there must surely be something here of value."

[Jan Novak]

Jan gulped some coffee, took copies of data, and focused on Limbo first. He had two running hypotheses: displacement of tectonic plates may have distorted the crust enough to make some deep desposits surface. The other: the readings were what profit-seekers wanted to see, and the same effects were produced by something else altogether. He applied his informed guesses to whether there was anything that could produce a confusion of that sort. For the time being, he devoted his mind's backchannel to invert tectonic moves to pre-shattering position, taking into account the planet's axial tilt and cooling-corrected ice sheet pressures that might have changed mantle dynamics - trying to falsify his first idea. He wouldn't speak before having anything remotely credible to offer.

[Colette Rupelle]

Colette was quiet in the meeting just swaying from side to side. The scientist were the ones to choose the destiny. She is not one to speak. She did have some questions but she as well kept them to herself.

[Lucretzia Winters]

"You may add your own thoughts, Colette."

Lucretzia smiled faintly. "Sometimes a gut feeling or practical consideration may be useful as well - it is important to hear all perspectives before we decide. Else we find the perfect theory but forget some basic matter of common sense."