Rodarc LFAWT [#02] - "Signal Hunting"

Hey log, Winter here. Time for another update, so here goes...

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LOG 1605-0748

I've been stuck in this hospital for far longer than i would have liked. Medical beds still make me nervous, and the smell is too sanitary for my comforts - give me a bit of work shop grit any day.

Lucky for me,  the bandages were to come off today!

Finally. 

As I was unbinding them I remembered thinking back to when my adoptive father would try his hand at D.I.Y at the repair shack on Arkana. He'd usually end up wrapped in more of this medical tape than I am now, and Otay and I would have to finish his job - it's how we learnt our techniques and eventually ended up in space in the first place.

I wonder how he's doing now? We have been gone for a little while already.

Anyway, the last of the bandages are off and it seems I'm now the owner of two small, crystalline horns! Cool! However, Doctor Arcturo has continued with her research into them and she's also certain that they are growing. She said her scans are not entirely dissimilar to the data from the scan readings of the refractive anomaly, which means they are born of the Echo Space in some way.

So, despite liking them, they're absolutely not of this dimension and  I will have them removed in a couple of weeks.  Once they're hacked off they'll make a nice addition to my shelf on the Rubricauda. 

Speaking of ships; Otay and I are on another mission.

Seems the station heads weren't entirely honest with us. What was supposed to be a quick fix and trade for our ship has ended up being a laundry list of errands which keeps growing. When we cornered them and demanded (well, threatened them for) an explanation, they came clean.

They're missing parts for the repair, and can't get a message to anywhere in the system to update their inventory. Turns out some unusual signal is jamming the entire station. They told us they've sent two scouting parties to the source of the signal but none have returned. We told them we'd look in to the problem, but that this would be our last mission.

It was a day out with the horrendously slow engines the rental ship has, but we persevered and now find ourselves orbiting VS-1298; a small black hole several light years away from the station. The gravitational shear from the black hole makes the ship creak and rock, and has been playing havoc with our on board gravity systems. In honesty, I'm not faring too well with the motion. I've had to run to the toilet several times, and to top it off my head feels like it's about to implode! Once i'm finished writing this log i'll grab myself some of the hot herbal tonic we took from home. Maybe it'll settle my stomach at least.

I've also began analysing the data from the first volley of probes sent down into the accretion disk, but i can't make heads or tails of the telemetry. There are some strange readings coming from various locations around the black hole, all with the same information, but staggered slightly and with huge differences in the intensity of the wave forms. If it's anything like the Refractive Anomaly was, it could be that there are multiple anomalies bouncing the signal between them this time - I don't know for sure yet. That would explain the signal's strength and ability to jam a station's communication array a few light years away though.

At least, i think so...

Anyway, Otayen is asleep just now. Lucky bugger isn't phased by the constant rocking. Once he's awake i'll propose something radical to solve this.

I'll keep gathering data and no doubt update it here soon.

Can't wait to have our old ship back!

Winter