Priorities:
Try the power building a bit more, then the rest of the base? Yes.
We could cut our way in, with equipment from the ship. Gani thinks it would be an unlikely place to hide.
The NW #2 building’s door has been bashed with high human strength, but not penetrated. The windows are intact. Looking in, it’s tidy accomodation, no movement or bodies. These blocks have 4 cabins and a common living area and kitchen. We can see into the common area and one cabin. Other cabon windows are opaqued. Gani opens the door, we search and it’s deliberately tidy according to regs, and there’s a body in one of the showers. Navy uniform, Able Spacehand, apparently killed herself with this gun. There’s a log recorder, normal civilian electronics.
We play it. Voice recording: Astrogator of 5A7 had a virus, 20 days after landing, attacks started, fought back, but infected people changed sides, one ATV gone, she ran for her quarters, they couldn’t open the door and didn’t understand basic tech. She couldn’t kill them with bullets. They retrived food and potted plants. Someone got away in an ATV, and both air-rafts are gone. She denied them a convert by killing herself when she was out of food, about 8 weeks ago.
As we’re leaving, three tendril creatures come in for us. The first one comes apart under laser fire in the second round, the second gets wounded by laser in the fourth and Konash demolishes the third in the same round. The wounded one absorbs some bits, but I blow it away in the fifth.
With all three disabled, we sweep the bits together and start an oil fire on them. That actually works. But we do need the accelerants. We burn her corpse on the pyre of her enemies, and take her dog tags and Spacer Carey’s tags, which she also had. No more come along while we are doing this. We check her guns, a pistol 10mm and a shotgun, but no ammunition. We close the door and Gani does up the lock.
I have a shotgun back on the ship, but we need to decontaminate before we go back in. As we head for 4A4, we see a flicker of light, as if a flame, through one of the windows of 5A7. We go to it, there are no lights or signs of activity. It is pinging on its transponder. We have an emergency access code that should work. We knock on a personel lock for 10 mins, no response. It doesn’t have enough power running to take off.
Gani tries climbing to the bridge windows, and makes it, slowly. The bridge looks normal. Looking for clues, someone comes in. She’s in civilian crew uniform, points at things on the bridge, seems very stressed. After a while she holds her datapad to the window. “<name>, 5A7 engineer, ship locked down.” He replies the same way “Vacc suit?” She goes away, comes back “Yes, how to get out?” A lockdown on these ships means external doors and ships systems unavailable. Unlock with senior crew member’s swipe card. She isn’t in a suit, doesn’t think there’s infection on board.
Lockdown takes precedence over emergency access codes. We could cut our way in, probably, and fixably afterwards.