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You appear to be in a large airlock. What do you do first?

You look carefully around the airlock. You realise the surfaces aren't tarnished or dusty. They're damaged by vacuum ablation. This chamber hasn't seen air for a very long time.

Next to an inner door with a small window are a small panel with some controls, presumably to operate the door, and a small sign which appears to have writing on it. On the wall near is is some kind of access panel. You should probably try to open the airlock to access the ship.

You turn your attention to the door control panel. It appears to have power from whatever energy source this ship is still using. Probably some kind of passive energy collection from the neutron star the ship is orbiting.

There are four buttons on the panel:
• A large red button marked "equalise"
• A green button marked "decontaminate"
• A black button marked "emergency eject"
• A blue button with writing too damaged by vacuum to read

You press:

You look around the corridor, first left then right. It curves out of view in both directions after some metres, with a high arched ceiling. Between the algae pods, the walls are decorated with colourful mosaics. The old Sirians, it seems, were fond of grand architecture.

What do you do?

The mosaic is highly stylised, but you think you can tell what some of the images represent. Though you can't be entirely sure. You decide to head to one of the locations depicted.

Where do you go?

This is a large chamber. You're not certain where to look first. Searching the place exhaustively would take a very long time. Looking around, you see a few places which you think look promising.

First, you investigate the:

There's probably some clue in one of these things about what was going on here. A feeling like a cold, heavy stone in the pit of your stomach tells you it might be related to why this place was abandoned.

You investigate:

You shake your head in irritation at the holoscreen. There must be some way to use this computer, but you're not sure what it is.

The blue light on the holoscreen emitter flickers briefly. "Current status unknown. Last time of access JD 4864459. Log file available."

A log file might be helpful. Or you could check to see what else is available.

You ask:

You stagger backwards from the holoscreen, your skin prickling, shocked at what you just saw. You look around the laboratory sharply. Did that happen... here? Where you're standing? Your thoughts reel as your stomach twists in knots. You should never have come here.

What do you do?

(I'm putting a pin in this here, because it's 2:30 am. Hope you're enjoying this odd little story so far. I can continue it tomorrow, if anyone wants?)

@anne Certainly not the kind of place I'd choose to park my research vessel, I must say.

@InvaderXan well, two thousand years, maybe it wasn't a neutron star yet when they parked it there...

@anne Honestly, same. They're such fascinating objects!

@RedFuture Oh, you're welcome to discuss. If you want to figure something out, or want some kind of hint.

@InvaderXan Already voted equalise, we're in our vac suit anyway and can decontam on the way out if needed. How much do we know about the Sirian republic? Why did they fall? Have we heard anything about what might be on a ship like this?

Also, how extra-legal is what we're doing?

@GwenfarsGarden Oh, thank you! I wanted to flex my creative muscles a bit

@RedFuture Most likely. According to the stories, Sirian ships like this one were run by elected councils who made decisions on navigation, destinations, and ship management. It would be a good place to look for logs and records too.

@InvaderXan Let's get an idea of what we're dealing with! To the democracy bridge!

@InvaderXan Bearing in mind not only will notes be valuable in and of themselves and warn of danger, but they may point us to cool shit we may otherwise miss

@RedFuture Sounds like good thinking to me!

@RedFuture Modern Sirian tech doesn't work with voice commands. They're currently only used in Rigellian Union systems. But you have no way of knowing what might have been used when this ship was still crewed.

@anarchiv @InvaderXan it's the good shit