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Description
Encounter ID: 031-06209-AB “Rumavimelu”
[Start Incident Report]

            Date: 2840560

            Location: Near PA-3722

            Reporting Personnel: Kayode Nangolo (Curator for report)

            Threat Level: Matssari

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            “Good afternoon, my name is Kayode Nangolo and I am a researcher working under an extended contract with the ZSV. My contract has been expanded to perform additional analysis of Matassari level oddities that are being encountered. In the case of what was literally run into out by PA-3722 this item of interest certainly counts as an IPF oddity as it may shed light on the megafauna we have been encountering. Obviously when it comes to megafauna one of the first questions I get is something about what they are eating to sustain such massive size. Well this time around we may or may not have an answer. Just about two weeks ago a tramp freighter named Ong’s Hat collided with a mass of something while reorienting for a faster than light jaunt towards its next fixed navigation point. The crew was not exactly cooperative with sector guard authorities when they limped into port several days after the collision but ZSV agents were able to ‘acquire the ship’s pertinent data as well as to ’dispose of’ the encountered biological material from the collision. The ship itself is what spacefarer’s would call a ‘junker’ or a ship that’s far beyond its normal service life with heavy modification enough so that it may or may not resemble its original configuration. Most of these ships are illegal because they cannot pass any sort of code and safety inspection however; Ong’s Hat had a surprisingly clean record, Captain [redacted] seems to be pretty strict about repairs and maintenance so the ship has passed inspections in a variety of credible dry docks. The ship is a bit old, as in pre-ring drive technology to be very specific it’s using Tachyon Carrier Wave or TCW drives which were what was in use before the Chernov Kakuma FTL system was being developed. Centuries ago these painfully slow drives were used on colonial sleeper ships allowing them to move across the stars which lead to a number of disasters but also the establishment of a few colonies. The Ong’s Hat has the great-great-great grandkid of that old technology it’s much faster and far cheaper then modern Hyperfield Technology, however the jaunt range is far shorter and with each jaunt (a step into FTL speeds) the ship’s navigational systems have to reassess where the ship is, what the subspace tachyon drift is and other minutiae of faster than light maneuvers. So based on the logs of the ship she was operating normally, nothing strange going on.”

            “Things got weird for Ong’s Hat when they were prepared to use their drives again and were hit with something sensors did not see. As far as I can tell this was not due to a failing of the bridge officers or any mechanical or digital fault, ISF-018 seems to have literally come out of nowhere and that’s when things went sideways. The mass of IPF-018 was at least a two hundred meters in diameter, we don’t know what shape it was in before impact, just that it hit the bow of Ong’s Hat so hard that it crumpled the first two sections of the bow like they were nothing. Emergency systems worked as they were supposed to and the front two sections of the ship were blocked off by emergency doors and structural integrity fields. The ship’s primary shields had not yet been activated so it is a testament to Captain [Redacted]’s insistence that the ship’s frame be as reinforced as was possible and that the emergency bulkhead systems have redundancies. Unfortunately three crew were in the forward portion of the ship on impact, two were crushed to death, the third according to sensor logs was not so lucky. Crewman [Redacted] was pinned in place by a buckled support beam. Before the crew could get to her, IPF-018 did. It seems the organism entered the ship through the areas exposed to space and despite emergency fields it still got to the crewman. From this we get our first look of IPF-018, at a glance you might call it megaflora because it certainly resembles deep purple-ish colored sea weed, complete with what appear to be gas bladders. The fact that it can move makes it less so. In the crewman’s final moments it can be seen pushing through a SIF barrier like it’s nothing and slither-crawling across the floor and walls towards the crewman. The sensor feed dies as the stuff apparently covers the sensor unit in the compartment but the lack of a body and only the crewman’s inorganic materials left behind like their tools, belt buckle and so on tells us what we want to know. Things according to the captain’s logs head downhill from there as this ‘space weed’ aggressively begins to enter the ship using its mass to burst through weak points in the ship’s bulkheads or to overwhelm emergency fields. The crew struggles to maintain the ship for approximately three days before they finally limp into range of a port. By this time the surviving crew is operating the ship from a stern engineering substation and a full ninety percent of the ship is covered by IPF-018. Internally at this point about seventy percent of the ship is filled with IPF-018, and the only thing that seems to be holding it back are the extra reinforced bulkheads in and around central engineering.”

            “So, what does this threat look like exactly? Everything we know so far is from the one specimen attached to Ong’s Hat. Well, as I said before IPF-018 is roughly a dark purple in coloration, this fades the closer to the front tips that you look. The dark purple color seen near the ‘holdfast’ organ becomes paler, almost a light whiteish-lilac color. Intact individual fronds can be up to twelve IMU long. Physically speaking each individual front can have up to thirty lobes per frond and the margins of those lobes are undulating and serrated. Based on the specimen we have it seems that hundreds of fronds can unfurl from a singular holdfast organ and each of these gets progressively larger as the plant acquires more nutrient from its environment. The fronds appear to have what look like pneumatocysts; but when we dissected these in a laboratory it was found that they are a series of specialized organs, some are sensory, others appear to emit small amounts of gravitational effects, others contain the plant’s digestive systems. In the former case, preliminary studies have suggested that these plants are able to ‘see’ on the ultraviolet, infrared and theoretically can ‘smell’ the organic compounds in a living being. In the case of the gravitational organs, it was noticed that some specimens of IPF-018 kept crawling up container walls and in the process of doing so micro-gravity fields were detected; this may be how they ‘drift’ about the cosmos. In the latter case, which is possibly the most disturbing part, the ‘digestive’ cysts seem to work chemically opposite to how we understand digestion to work in an animal. These cysts have specialized structures and the ability to exude a hyper-corrosive alkaline substance. The compounds used is extremely strong to a point is estimated it may be above the normal maximum threshold of fourteen on the standard scale. The plant basically spits its digestive fluids on what it’s trying to consume and laps up the remaining chemical soup. We theorize that in nature whatever megafauna this plant tries to eat would end up with patches of fronds across its surface as the fronds would keep the liquefied bits in long enough for the plant to consume them. This might explain why it aggressively covered the hull of Ong’s Hat as it did. Beyond this, from the specimen we have we know that this plant can have at least two more physical structures of note. The fronts emerge from an organ we call a ‘stellar holdfast’ but they are attached to the stellar holdfast by what is analogous to a stipe. The big difference is that the individual stipes seem to grow to set lengths to presumably lessen competition between individual fronds. We have noticed that individual stipes that come into contact with a source of nutrient appear to form smaller stellar holdfasts and this may be a means of asexual reproduction.”

            “It is safe to assume that this megaflora has evolved to feed on any organic matter it can find; as it stripped Ong’s Hat of every bit of organic matter it came into contact with. Food stores, polymer seals and gaskets, leather, plant fiber clothing, people, it even ate the ship’s cat. Nothing was off the menu for this thing which makes it very dangerous. This suggests that this plant is some kind of space bottom feeder with a heavy opportunistic lean. There is nothing in any database we have of our own or in the old empire with a description of such a strange life form. The ship has been quietly ‘disappeared’ as it is hopelessly infested. The surviving five crew have been given heavy amnesiacs, and a new “Ong’s Hat” has been provided. The entire encounter publically has been buried under a story of a collision with a small rogue planetoid-fragment. Captain [Redacted] and the surviving crew have been compensated through an insurance shell-agency and no one is the wiser.”

[Addendum]

            “At the current time, we have just four living cultures of IPF-018 three of them are in stasis, with triple safety redundancies in place. Given the exponential groth of the main colony of IPF-018, it was decided by the higher ups that it could not be allowed to get anywhere near a space lane or planet. Also as an extra precaution because life forms this well suited to survival tend to mutate or adapt tossing it into a star was ruled out. The last trip of what was left of the real Ong’s Hat was into a black hole. It may sound extreme, but we deemed it the only way to be sure this stuff did not get loose near populated worlds. In review of what has already been said for this filing, it is my professional opinion that IPF-018 is a greater danger to interstellar commerce and travel than even IPS-023 ‘Yinjahit”. In our lab studies this stuff replicates quickly and can always well when a researcher is near enough to consume. More than a few of the junior technicians have been unnerved by the stuff aggressively thumping against the walls of its containment vessel. I am currently uncertain of what scientific discoveries we could possibly get from this thing, but most disturbing of all is that it seems to be able to tell the staff apart…I hope it’s not getting…” In the background a loud thump and the sound of something cracking is heard. Seconds later containment breach sirens begin to go off and the recording is abruptly terminated.

[End Incident Report]

Description
Encounter ID: 031-06209-AB “Rumavimelu”
[Start Incident Report]

            Date: 2840560

            Location: Near PA-3722

            Reporting Personnel: Kayode Nangolo (Curator for report)

            Threat Level: Matssari

[Checking file contents…]

[File verified as safe..]

[Checking User Credentials…..]

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[Playing Audio File]



            “Good afternoon, my name is Kayode Nangolo and I am a researcher working under an extended contract with the ZSV. My contract has been expanded to perform additional analysis of Matassari level oddities that are being encountered. In the case of what was literally run into out by PA-3722 this item of interest certainly counts as an IPF oddity as it may shed light on the megafauna we have been encountering. Obviously when it comes to megafauna one of the first questions I get is something about what they are eating to sustain such massive size. Well this time around we may or may not have an answer. Just about two weeks ago a tramp freighter named Ong’s Hat collided with a mass of something while reorienting for a faster than light jaunt towards its next fixed navigation point. The crew was not exactly cooperative with sector guard authorities when they limped into port several days after the collision but ZSV agents were able to ‘acquire the ship’s pertinent data as well as to ’dispose of’ the encountered biological material from the collision. The ship itself is what spacefarer’s would call a ‘junker’ or a ship that’s far beyond its normal service life with heavy modification enough so that it may or may not resemble its original configuration. Most of these ships are illegal because they cannot pass any sort of code and safety inspection however; Ong’s Hat had a surprisingly clean record, Captain [redacted] seems to be pretty strict about repairs and maintenance so the ship has passed inspections in a variety of credible dry docks. The ship is a bit old, as in pre-ring drive technology to be very specific it’s using Tachyon Carrier Wave or TCW drives which were what was in use before the Chernov Kakuma FTL system was being developed. Centuries ago these painfully slow drives were used on colonial sleeper ships allowing them to move across the stars which lead to a number of disasters but also the establishment of a few colonies. The Ong’s Hat has the great-great-great grandkid of that old technology it’s much faster and far cheaper then modern Hyperfield Technology, however the jaunt range is far shorter and with each jaunt (a step into FTL speeds) the ship’s navigational systems have to reassess where the ship is, what the subspace tachyon drift is and other minutiae of faster than light maneuvers. So based on the logs of the ship she was operating normally, nothing strange going on.”

            “Things got weird for Ong’s Hat when they were prepared to use their drives again and were hit with something sensors did not see. As far as I can tell this was not due to a failing of the bridge officers or any mechanical or digital fault, ISF-018 seems to have literally come out of nowhere and that’s when things went sideways. The mass of IPF-018 was at least a two hundred meters in diameter, we don’t know what shape it was in before impact, just that it hit the bow of Ong’s Hat so hard that it crumpled the first two sections of the bow like they were nothing. Emergency systems worked as they were supposed to and the front two sections of the ship were blocked off by emergency doors and structural integrity fields. The ship’s primary shields had not yet been activated so it is a testament to Captain [Redacted]’s insistence that the ship’s frame be as reinforced as was possible and that the emergency bulkhead systems have redundancies. Unfortunately three crew were in the forward portion of the ship on impact, two were crushed to death, the third according to sensor logs was not so lucky. Crewman [Redacted] was pinned in place by a buckled support beam. Before the crew could get to her, IPF-018 did. It seems the organism entered the ship through the areas exposed to space and despite emergency fields it still got to the crewman. From this we get our first look of IPF-018, at a glance you might call it megaflora because it certainly resembles deep purple-ish colored sea weed, complete with what appear to be gas bladders. The fact that it can move makes it less so. In the crewman’s final moments it can be seen pushing through a SIF barrier like it’s nothing and slither-crawling across the floor and walls towards the crewman. The sensor feed dies as the stuff apparently covers the sensor unit in the compartment but the lack of a body and only the crewman’s inorganic materials left behind like their tools, belt buckle and so on tells us what we want to know. Things according to the captain’s logs head downhill from there as this ‘space weed’ aggressively begins to enter the ship using its mass to burst through weak points in the ship’s bulkheads or to overwhelm emergency fields. The crew struggles to maintain the ship for approximately three days before they finally limp into range of a port. By this time the surviving crew is operating the ship from a stern engineering substation and a full ninety percent of the ship is covered by IPF-018. Internally at this point about seventy percent of the ship is filled with IPF-018, and the only thing that seems to be holding it back are the extra reinforced bulkheads in and around central engineering.”

            “So, what does this threat look like exactly? Everything we know so far is from the one specimen attached to Ong’s Hat. Well, as I said before IPF-018 is roughly a dark purple in coloration, this fades the closer to the front tips that you look. The dark purple color seen near the ‘holdfast’ organ becomes paler, almost a light whiteish-lilac color. Intact individual fronds can be up to twelve IMU long. Physically speaking each individual front can have up to thirty lobes per frond and the margins of those lobes are undulating and serrated. Based on the specimen we have it seems that hundreds of fronds can unfurl from a singular holdfast organ and each of these gets progressively larger as the plant acquires more nutrient from its environment. The fronds appear to have what look like pneumatocysts; but when we dissected these in a laboratory it was found that they are a series of specialized organs, some are sensory, others appear to emit small amounts of gravitational effects, others contain the plant’s digestive systems. In the former case, preliminary studies have suggested that these plants are able to ‘see’ on the ultraviolet, infrared and theoretically can ‘smell’ the organic compounds in a living being. In the case of the gravitational organs, it was noticed that some specimens of IPF-018 kept crawling up container walls and in the process of doing so micro-gravity fields were detected; this may be how they ‘drift’ about the cosmos. In the latter case, which is possibly the most disturbing part, the ‘digestive’ cysts seem to work chemically opposite to how we understand digestion to work in an animal. These cysts have specialized structures and the ability to exude a hyper-corrosive alkaline substance. The compounds used is extremely strong to a point is estimated it may be above the normal maximum threshold of fourteen on the standard scale. The plant basically spits its digestive fluids on what it’s trying to consume and laps up the remaining chemical soup. We theorize that in nature whatever megafauna this plant tries to eat would end up with patches of fronds across its surface as the fronds would keep the liquefied bits in long enough for the plant to consume them. This might explain why it aggressively covered the hull of Ong’s Hat as it did. Beyond this, from the specimen we have we know that this plant can have at least two more physical structures of note. The fronts emerge from an organ we call a ‘stellar holdfast’ but they are attached to the stellar holdfast by what is analogous to a stipe. The big difference is that the individual stipes seem to grow to set lengths to presumably lessen competition between individual fronds. We have noticed that individual stipes that come into contact with a source of nutrient appear to form smaller stellar holdfasts and this may be a means of asexual reproduction.”

            “It is safe to assume that this megaflora has evolved to feed on any organic matter it can find; as it stripped Ong’s Hat of every bit of organic matter it came into contact with. Food stores, polymer seals and gaskets, leather, plant fiber clothing, people, it even ate the ship’s cat. Nothing was off the menu for this thing which makes it very dangerous. This suggests that this plant is some kind of space bottom feeder with a heavy opportunistic lean. There is nothing in any database we have of our own or in the old empire with a description of such a strange life form. The ship has been quietly ‘disappeared’ as it is hopelessly infested. The surviving five crew have been given heavy amnesiacs, and a new “Ong’s Hat” has been provided. The entire encounter publically has been buried under a story of a collision with a small rogue planetoid-fragment. Captain [Redacted] and the surviving crew have been compensated through an insurance shell-agency and no one is the wiser.”

[Addendum]

            “At the current time, we have just four living cultures of IPF-018 three of them are in stasis, with triple safety redundancies in place. Given the exponential groth of the main colony of IPF-018, it was decided by the higher ups that it could not be allowed to get anywhere near a space lane or planet. Also as an extra precaution because life forms this well suited to survival tend to mutate or adapt tossing it into a star was ruled out. The last trip of what was left of the real Ong’s Hat was into a black hole. It may sound extreme, but we deemed it the only way to be sure this stuff did not get loose near populated worlds. In review of what has already been said for this filing, it is my professional opinion that IPF-018 is a greater danger to interstellar commerce and travel than even IPS-023 ‘Yinjahit”. In our lab studies this stuff replicates quickly and can always well when a researcher is near enough to consume. More than a few of the junior technicians have been unnerved by the stuff aggressively thumping against the walls of its containment vessel. I am currently uncertain of what scientific discoveries we could possibly get from this thing, but most disturbing of all is that it seems to be able to tell the staff apart…I hope it’s not getting…” In the background a loud thump and the sound of something cracking is heard. Seconds later containment breach sirens begin to go off and the recording is abruptly terminated.

[End Incident Report]