“Good morning,” Jürgen Schmidt said as he sat down at the breakfast table in the Cafeteria. Both Arthur Nkomo and Ichikawa Zenigata were already there, looking up from their breakfast. “I am sorry that I am late, but the shower controls were... unusual.”
“Just sit down with us,” Arthur said with a grin, “things like this happen to everyone up in orbit for the first time.” He already knew that the cats from Jenga were a bit mad about their showers.
They had started interviewing some of the astronauts yesterday, but had to pause because everyone had becoming too tired.
“So how do we continue today, there are still quite a few astronauts left we have not talked to.” their japanese co-worker asked, “And we also need to talk with the catgirls who were in the control room during the attack.”
Arthur nodded.
“Maybe we should split up” Arthur suggested, “this way we get all the interviews done this morning and can focus on the technical evidence afterwards. I know they want us to interview all of them, but we should hurry up.”
“Good idea” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we split up for the Astronauts and catgirls, but do the interview with the two AIs of the station together. I bet they will have more facts for us.”
---
“And then the alarm hit me, moments before the projectile impacted. I didn’t even had time to warn anyone, I am just happy that the shot hit. Unfortunately the other turrets were not in the right position.”
Arthur nodded and made a few additional nodes.
“Thank you Serina,” he said, “if you recognize something that might be important, contact us immediately. Cortana, do you want to add anything more?”
“No, I think you got everything we experienced during the attack” Cortana answered. “And you also have the full video of it for later analysis. If you have any questions about details just ask, we are both present all over the station.”
“We will do so” Arthur assured, “but lets have a look at the physical evidence now. I hope you have some news for us!”
Serina’s Avatar smiled and the door of the room opened to let in an Exocomp.
“Follow him to the main hall, I think the catgirls have assembled all the evidence there. Its not far.”
The main hall was just a few corridors away, a huge room separated into two areas by a large glasslike wall. As the group entered, a catgirl approached them.
“Hello, Cortana told me you would come. I am Vivio, I can show you the current status of our investigation.”
“Thank you” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we are curious what you got. Will Cathy join us too?”
“Oh, Cathy is still sleeping. She organized the team that brought most of the fragments into this hall” Vivio explained.
“But let me give you an overview what we have found.
The origin of the attack is far outside the ecliptics, it took the projectile hours to arrive at Pan.”
The room darkened and a holographic projection of Saturn and its moons appeared, marking Pan with a bright yellow ring. A tiny red dot floated far away of the planet.
“The red dot marks the place where the weapon had been placed” Vivio continued and the a small dot separated from the existing one and raced towards Saturn. Moments later the original marker began to expand into a red sphere.
“As you can see, only moments after the shot the weapon platform exploded. When we found it, it had had been scattered over an area of more than a lightsecond diameter!”
The projection zoomed onto the spherical area to show a widely distributed debris field.
“We placed reference buoys around the field and began to collect the parts, after recording their vector and spin. At the moment we have at least 78% of the original weapon system and all parts larger than a centimeter!”
“What’s about the other 20%” Ichikawa Zenigata asked.
“We are still looking for tiny splinters” Vivio admitted. “You could put Earth and Moon into this area without changing the Moons orbit, I think you can understand the problem to get them all. But we already have a rough image of the weapon system.”
The projection changed again, the particles raced back to the center until the frame of some kind of machine appeared. There were quite a few holes in the machine, marking places where the reconstruction wasn’t complete.
“This is the best reconstruction we have been able to come up with over the last day. As you can see our weapon system would barely fit into the trailer of a large truck or shipping container The structure suggests its some kind of mixed rail- and coilgun system, with some unidentified support infrastructure.
Still, we have a few parts we are not sure how they fit into the whole picture. There are quite a few metal loops and even some thick metal ropes, but no place to use the rope in the weapon.
The most interesting parts are splitters that might have been part of the rails for the projectile. They are made of a complicated mixture of elements, Cortana thinks they might be a hardtech superconductor. But as many parts of the weapon, they have been waved!”
Arthur nodded slowly.
“Thank you Vivio for this introduction. We will have to look at some of the parts ourselves, to get a feeling what might be important. Please run more parts through an analysis in your labs, maybe you will find something important.”
“We are just preparing the particle accelerator in the labs” Vivio agreed. “If you want to get a special part out of the room just call an Exocomp. But maybe it might be better you suit up and examine everything in vacuum, we don’t want to contaminate the parts.”
Arthur Nkomo looked at his two colleagues from Earth.
“Okay Gentlemen, lets find the needle in the haystack!”
“Just sit down with us,” Arthur said with a grin, “things like this happen to everyone up in orbit for the first time.” He already knew that the cats from Jenga were a bit mad about their showers.
They had started interviewing some of the astronauts yesterday, but had to pause because everyone had becoming too tired.
“So how do we continue today, there are still quite a few astronauts left we have not talked to.” their japanese co-worker asked, “And we also need to talk with the catgirls who were in the control room during the attack.”
Arthur nodded.
“Maybe we should split up” Arthur suggested, “this way we get all the interviews done this morning and can focus on the technical evidence afterwards. I know they want us to interview all of them, but we should hurry up.”
“Good idea” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we split up for the Astronauts and catgirls, but do the interview with the two AIs of the station together. I bet they will have more facts for us.”
---
“And then the alarm hit me, moments before the projectile impacted. I didn’t even had time to warn anyone, I am just happy that the shot hit. Unfortunately the other turrets were not in the right position.”
Arthur nodded and made a few additional nodes.
“Thank you Serina,” he said, “if you recognize something that might be important, contact us immediately. Cortana, do you want to add anything more?”
“No, I think you got everything we experienced during the attack” Cortana answered. “And you also have the full video of it for later analysis. If you have any questions about details just ask, we are both present all over the station.”
“We will do so” Arthur assured, “but lets have a look at the physical evidence now. I hope you have some news for us!”
Serina’s Avatar smiled and the door of the room opened to let in an Exocomp.
“Follow him to the main hall, I think the catgirls have assembled all the evidence there. Its not far.”
The main hall was just a few corridors away, a huge room separated into two areas by a large glasslike wall. As the group entered, a catgirl approached them.
“Hello, Cortana told me you would come. I am Vivio, I can show you the current status of our investigation.”
“Thank you” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we are curious what you got. Will Cathy join us too?”
“Oh, Cathy is still sleeping. She organized the team that brought most of the fragments into this hall” Vivio explained.
“But let me give you an overview what we have found.
The origin of the attack is far outside the ecliptics, it took the projectile hours to arrive at Pan.”
The room darkened and a holographic projection of Saturn and its moons appeared, marking Pan with a bright yellow ring. A tiny red dot floated far away of the planet.
“The red dot marks the place where the weapon had been placed” Vivio continued and the a small dot separated from the existing one and raced towards Saturn. Moments later the original marker began to expand into a red sphere.
“As you can see, only moments after the shot the weapon platform exploded. When we found it, it had had been scattered over an area of more than a lightsecond diameter!”
The projection zoomed onto the spherical area to show a widely distributed debris field.
“We placed reference buoys around the field and began to collect the parts, after recording their vector and spin. At the moment we have at least 78% of the original weapon system and all parts larger than a centimeter!”
“What’s about the other 20%” Ichikawa Zenigata asked.
“We are still looking for tiny splinters” Vivio admitted. “You could put Earth and Moon into this area without changing the Moons orbit, I think you can understand the problem to get them all. But we already have a rough image of the weapon system.”
The projection changed again, the particles raced back to the center until the frame of some kind of machine appeared. There were quite a few holes in the machine, marking places where the reconstruction wasn’t complete.
“This is the best reconstruction we have been able to come up with over the last day. As you can see our weapon system would barely fit into the trailer of a large truck or shipping container The structure suggests its some kind of mixed rail- and coilgun system, with some unidentified support infrastructure.
Still, we have a few parts we are not sure how they fit into the whole picture. There are quite a few metal loops and even some thick metal ropes, but no place to use the rope in the weapon.
The most interesting parts are splitters that might have been part of the rails for the projectile. They are made of a complicated mixture of elements, Cortana thinks they might be a hardtech superconductor. But as many parts of the weapon, they have been waved!”
Arthur nodded slowly.
“Thank you Vivio for this introduction. We will have to look at some of the parts ourselves, to get a feeling what might be important. Please run more parts through an analysis in your labs, maybe you will find something important.”
“We are just preparing the particle accelerator in the labs” Vivio agreed. “If you want to get a special part out of the room just call an Exocomp. But maybe it might be better you suit up and examine everything in vacuum, we don’t want to contaminate the parts.”
Arthur Nkomo looked at his two colleagues from Earth.
“Okay Gentlemen, lets find the needle in the haystack!”