Scott looked at the stars and daydreamed. It had only been a few weeks since they had gotten to the Jool system, she had really expected to go through with the Jool-5 mission.
Her thoughts went back to the trip to Laythe and then Vall, back when the ShadowMage was a magnificent vessel. Sure she had her damage and turned like a brick, and she was her’s to pilot. Now she was living in an ugly hulk of assorted parts that Valwig had assembled, she was both in awe and fear of the man’s skills.
Her thoughts came back to today and she hurried to the launch bay. Valwig and Erilorf were already waiting for her. “Powering up main systems and initiating undock, ShadowMage, see you in a day or 5.” With a loud clang, the two ships separated and the team found themselves gasping for air. “Helmets on,” Erilorf said, but that was easier said than done. When the Mk1 lander was extended to 3 the room for helmets was decreased. Scott rocked the craft back and then re-docked. “Let’s get some supplies before we leave.” The second time things went well and they changed to the proper inclination.
“Approaching landing coordinates, initiating burn,” Scott sounded happy again as she piloted the little Hikomi lander to the proper coordinates. Without a problem, the lander reached the surface of the moon. Ready for some more science, Dr. Erilorf had not uncovered any new alien knowledge on Laythe, to everyone’s surprise, but Vall had a significant graviloli nexus on the southern hemisphere.
It was time to plant the flag in the name of all Kerbals and especially the ones that gave their lives in the pursuit of science. Valwig and Scott headed back in, they had to make a small 51 km jump if they were to reach their planned destination so that needed to be planned.
“I’ll go check out that geyser,” Dr. Erilorf said. It was a magnificent sight with jets of vapor licking the sky after being jetted up for kilometers. She took some readings and found that the jets pulsed in a regular pattern. So, the next time the geyser stopped spouting she climbed inside it.
“Wow, this is really interesting,” she said as she collected the samples that would later turn out to by water particles, but indeed they looked very pretty.  The would provide some clues to how the inside of the moon was heated up by the graviloli nexus nearby. Now it was time to make a jump and checkout that nexus they had discovered.
“What is that?” Both Valwig and Erilorf tried to climb over Scott’s shoulders as they approached the strange artifact. “Patience, I’m almost there, and then you can see for yourself.” She replied. The next 2 days they would study an ancient artifact that looked like lots of spikes pointing at the sky.
“The view is amazing,” Erilorft had climbed up one of the towering pillars and checked out the view. “I think it is pointing at the wormhole or was pointing at it,” she hypothesized as she took her readings. “It’s also tied in the gravioli network, just like the monoliths,”
In the months to come, she would discover that the artifact was the wormhole controller. It was ancient but clearly made by someone or something. The monoliths did many things: act as communication relays, energy transfer, possibly teleportation, but mainly to power this thing. This device had been used to open a stable wormhole to another star system, using the gravitic data from the other planets. “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world,” she said to herself.
But that was all in the future. It was time to head back up as supplies were still very low. Scott made sure they would fly over the artifact for some additional photos and then blasted off.
Orbital insertion went without a hitch and there was still plenty of fuel left. They were after all still in Tylo configuration. “Setting a course for ShadowMage,” Scott radioed in, with a bit of disappointment in her voice. She had enjoyed the little trip.
Docking would prove to be hard. The thrusters on this spacecraft were suboptimal to save weight but annoyingly underpowered. After 15 minutes of fiddling, they were back in the bay.
That evening Scott made an announcement during dinner. She was standing down as commander of the ShadowMage and promoted Valwig to the new station commander. Running a station was not her thing, she was meant to fly and looking at monitors and a green planet looming in the skies was depressing her too much.
She then radioed mission control and told them that she was going in cryo for the time being. “Please find me a ship to fly,” is how she ended her report, things were not well. Bob prepared the cryo chamber and to everyone’s surprise, Judith came up to them and asked if she could join them, it would stretch the food supplies to 5 years and she was as bored as Scott.
And so with the mysteries of Vall unlocked, Dr. Erilorf and Bob went on their way to study the data while Valwig hummed a song and repaired a power section. Life on the ShadowMage required an adaptive mind indeed.
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