Traveller Scout Campaign Ep7 - Watch the bouncing Intrepid

After the planning meeting, Carol set a course for the nearest Gas Giant to Kotori Prime at 2G. Bob and Mary went to work on the inoperable drones while Sonny started system checks in preparation for refueling at the Gas Giant. They worked for a few hours then Carol told them all to get some rest - she would cover the first shift monitoring the sensors.

The following shifts were uneventful - no contacts, either ship or stellar objects. Also, no transmissions were detected from nearby or the system. Towards the end of the next day, Carol received 2 reports…

First Bob and Mary reported on the drones. They were able to fix 2 of the drones by cannibalizing parts from 3 drones which were now permanently inoperable. So now there were a total of 3 operable drones - although she was still suspicious of the 2 repaired ones. "We'll test out one of the repaired drones as high guard during our refueling," she said. "Understood," Bob replied and he continued, "we will review the remaining 5 and see if we can get some of them running." Carol said, "Let's save that work for now - we have 3 drones which should get us through the initial planet survey. At this point I want you to return to ship system and planetary gear checks. I think you can figure out why…" Mary said, "Understood and totally agree."

A little later Sonny delivered the 'new' bad news. "I was doing a review of the ship control program for gas giant operations and found a version mismatch on some of the software. The module that calculates parameters for crossing the layers of the gas giant is wrong - it's for a 400-ton Donosev Class scout. I'm not comfortable trying to reprogram on the fly - so maybe we can manually compensate?" Carol said "Doubtful but I will try. I have heard of ships trying but have yet to hear of one succeeding. Let me guess though - the software was updated at the base?"  Sonny replied, "not sure yet I need to do some more research. I also need to poke around the storage archives and see if we have a backup of the previous version… but that will take time." Carol replied, "Ok let's add that work to our backlog along with the remaining drones. I will try to do it manually, but if worse comes to worse, we will just skim at Layer 2 (Extreme Shallow zone) even though it will add hours to our refueling." Sonny replied "Sounds good, I'll get back to the remaining ship checks."

The rest of the transit to the Gas Giant continued to be uneventful. Luckily no new problems were found with the ship and planetary gear. Once in orbit, Bob did a scan of the moons. One moon was D3-sized, the second moon was actually a close grouping of asteroids. Nothing out of the ordinary was detected so the crew moved on to preparing for the refueling operations. 

"Deploy the Drone for high guard," Carol ordered Bob. "Drone away and moving into position. Systems checks are good," Bob said. After a few minutes, he said "Drone is in position, sensors and comms are nominal." Carol, "Very well, proceeding with entry of layer 2 (after Wisp region is Extreme Shallow layer)." After a few minutes, Bob reported "Successful entry into layer 2." Carol then ordered Sonny "Begin initial testing of the skimming subsystem." After a while, Sonny reported "Skimming/Refueling system operating properly. Ready for Layer 3 entry." Carol said "Shift layer entry program to manual and cross your fingers." Perhaps she will pull this off and go down in Scout Lore as the only Captain to manually cross layers she thought…

After the fifth try and the first report of minor external hull damage, she realized today was not the day she would enter Scout Lore. "Alright, no joy. Let's go ahead and commence skimming ops where we are. Sonny, what's the time estimate to fill our tanks at the reduced rate?" Sonny reported, "approximately 16 hours." Maybe I will get the record for the longest time spent refueling at a gas giant Carol thought. "Very well, proceed. Begin  planning for initial planetary survey of Kotori Prime in the meantime." "Aye, Skipper" she heard from multiple crew.