Double Exposure
A Tale from the Time of New Worlds for 5 players
The Octavia's Tale
NOTE: For this Tale, you must MUTE your microphone and block your video. You are only allowed to communicate via text. Furthermore, you may only communicate using Emoji symbols, including your introduction. Words and numbers are not allowed!
The Vonda Fleet Science Ship Octavia volunteered to go to the Leckie Ancilliary, to study the dust bubble and the stars inside of it. What had been a dusty stellar nursery supplying the materials for dozens of stars, hundreds of planets, and uncountable fragments of rock and ice was now a clear spherical region of space surrounded by a thinning wall of expanding dust.
The density of dust had been random, and there were holes in the wall of the bubble. Every two billion years or so, as the bubble orbited the galaxy, a clear space in the wall of the bubble aligned with a source of incredibly high energy gamma and X-ray radiation. Like a sunbeam through a window, that radiation would fall upon several of the planetary systems inside the bubble, sterilizing or destroying them. This would last for approximately a million years before the orbital alignment changed enough to stop the radiation.
As a race of curious sentient androids, this rare alignment called out for study and investigation. Fleet Command agreed. You did not expect to find a ship built by an unknown intelligent species struggling to escape the deadly impact of the radiation. They aren't going to make it. They are running at sublight speeds (0.54c), on a trajectory that cooks them in the next several days.
Their ship is too massive to bring into hyperspace using the Octavia's engines. (It's too massive for any engines.) You've docked the Octavia to the superstructure of the ship as best you can. There is no apparent way to get in or out of the other ship. You've sent out workerbots to cut the huge protective rock and metal shield away from the front of their ship. You're losing a lot of workerbots from the radiation. That means it's not safe for you to try to get to their ship. You're going to have to communicate by crude computer interface, without a common language.
When the shield is gone, the Octavia should be able to get a better grip. If you can figure out how to cut more mass from their ship, you should be able to get your shields around the remainder and get them into hyperspace. You may not be able to save everyone. Those you can save will be safe in hyperspace. Then you can do the hard work of First Contact.