34: Into Sandy's City

terminal 0

unfinished

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What the hell happened to you?! Sensors show you're deep under... underwater? Under the ocean? I can't get a visual feed from you, so that's my best guess, anyway. This is not the time for you to be messing around and getting off-track. Hold on... are you in a part of the Atreides? I'm getting a certain feedback signature trying to communicate through this terminal to you. This is... weird. Bide a moment.

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I tried changing the, uh, spatial tracking channels. Well this is barely any better, but now I can tell where you are. Sort of. It is a fragment of the Atreides. Specifically, it looks like the aquatic research and studies section of the biology labs. Seems like a big joke; when the ship fragmented itself in the upper atmosphere, parts of it must have fallen into the ocean. Oh, uh... Welp. Hold on again.

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At this point I've got a technician basically wiggling the rabbit ears here. This seems to be a clearer connection. At least, I've got the right color correction coming across. That's half the battle, isn't it? Anyway, are you happy now? I've got my entire goddamned attack force waiting for you to stop messing around and get back on track. This sector of the ship has got a signal amplifier station, and luckily it's nearby. Slightly northeast of your current position. Stop messing around with that, Ensign. Damnit. Forget it. Activate the signal amplifier and return here so I can get a lock on you and teleport you out. This is ridiculous.

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success

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Good enough. We're leaving. The majority of the Atreides is relatively intact, or at least most of the parts are near enough to each other to constitute "the ship" in my mind. To that end, I'm going to have you go on a minor scouting expedition underneath the ship before I bring the main force in to assault the main AI holding core. Imagine this being punishment for your screwing around here. Let's go.

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# t
<teleport to level 17>

terminal 1

unfinished

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Log Entry #0005 by Erick Donovan Age of entry: 65 days 8 hours 11 minutes stuck down here for 27 days now. heinrich is pissing me off. i seem to be getting angry at every little thing now. isolated myself down here in the observation room. how much longer until uesc rescuers arrive? someone in the bridge must have sent off the sos. how long does it take those fu someone is banging around near room 4. its really loud. i can hear the metal clanging all the way down here. if thats heinrich i think im going to kill him myself.

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looking at the camera now. sphtkr? why are they here? maybe they came to fight off the bugs, wherever they are. but whatever. if theyre here hopefully they can send a communication back home for some help. wait what are they the camera feed cut out but maybe i will hold out in here for a while longer.

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terminal 2

unfinished

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Log Entry #0058 by Susannah McNeill Age of entry: 90 days 1 hour 48 minutes We tried getting over to room 11 today. Near as we can tell though, when we crashed it completely broke off. Must have hit a cliff and snapped clean off. Which is too bad -- we can't find Werner or Mohamed anywhere, and it's not like the sector's that large. We'll make sure to get them funerary services when we get rescued. It can't be much longer. Just as a precautionary measure, though, I asked Erick to bring out whatever guns we had down here. Not that I suspect we'll be attacked by Pfhor, what, 400 meters underwater, but who knows. I don't know what idiot authorized Flamethrower storage in the aquatic studies labs, but hey.

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If we can find the pressure suits, we'll be okay. Those ROC crossbows seem to work fine underwater, so we could protect ourselves, but we can't leave the ship without the pressure suits. And I think they were in room 11. Why every single one of them was in room 11 is beyond me, but that's where they were. Oxygen rechargers everywhere, but the suits have to be in one damn place. If Werner took all the suits into room 11, I think I'm going to strangle him if and when we find him.

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terminal 3

unfinished

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Log Entry #0001 by Mark Foster Age of entry: 88 days 19 hours 59 minutes Susannah is getting on my nerves already. I think she and Kiera are nervous about being the only two women here with... what, eleven men? It's just bad luck on their behalf that that's what the roster looked like when we set out, but they've been trying to assert themselves ever since we left Earth. Now that we're stuck down here, they've been driving me out of my skull. Kiera keeps jumping down my throat about not keeping up on research and logging since we crashed here. Look, I've got better things on my mind than that. I think they're trying to keep us guys from approaching them... inappropriately, but at this point even if she were the last woman on Earth, I wouldn't go out with Kiera. Tough luck, ladies.

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terminal 4

unfinished

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Log Entry #0062 by Heinrich Schulz Age of entry: 68 days 6 hours 22 minutes Erick can go to hell, telling me what to do. "Dur dur turn on the signal extender you don't know what you're doing." Does he think this is my first day on the Atreides? Even given the circumstances, I'm not completely clueless. I turned off the signal extender on purpose. Didn't want the Pfhor to find us down here. It's been over a month and we haven't been rescued -- clearly the extender isn't going to help us. We have to find our own way out. But of course it figures, the pressurized suits aren't down here. They must be in room 11. So as far as I can tell, we're screwed.

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But as long as Erick dies first, I don't even care. I might kill him myself if he gets in my face again. I'll drown him in the containment pit or something. I'd throw him out the airlock except the controls are on the other side of the damn door.

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