=Emergency Protocols= 
**Posted by:** Alisha Endowi, Gatecrasher <Info Msg Rep>
Gatecrashing is dangerous business and all manner of unexpected troubles can happen. We don’t pretend to have answers for everything and once you walk through a gate there are no guarantees that you’ll ever manage to ﬁnd your way back to the solar system. However, gatecrashers and the groups running the gates have learned to manage many of the most common problems.
==Gate Failure== 
One of the biggest fears of any gatecrasher is gate failure. On occasion, a gate refuses to open to a previously-visited destination, like the place you currently are. Such incidents are fortunately rare, and in most cases, the connection can be re-established within 48 hours. However, occasionally reopening the gate takes far longer, and a few have yet to be reached again.
If you’re on the remote side of a gate and the incoming connection that you’re expecting fails to occur on schedule, there’s a fairly standard series of protocols to follow. The ﬁrst step is one of the major reasons that all gatecrasher teams are advised to bring along QE comms—let the gate crew know that you are still there. They now know your gate didn’t suddenly explode and you know that the problem is gate failure and not that the TITANs ate the gate operators.
Some of the gate operators have a mutual agreement to help each other out. If [[Gatekeeper Corporation|Gatekeeper]] fails to make a connection within 48 hours, for example, they will quite often turn to either [[TerraGenesis]] or [[Fissure Gate#Love%20and%20Rage|Love and Rage]] to see if either of those gates can access the remote destination. This usually doesn’t work simply because the address to an extrasolar location from one gate is usually not functional when used at another gate. Sometimes, however, the other gate is able to extrapolate an address that will work with their settings, or they may have already reached that location independently and so already have it in their library.
If you happen to have a portable gate control unit with you, you can of course attempt to open a connection from the remote side. This sometimes works, but just as often does not. If that fails, you can try making a connection to another extrasolar gate. If this works, you’ll have revealed a new pathway between two known worlds and may get a bonus. Depending on where this takes you, however, this may not be the end to your problems. You will at least have the option of escaping from a hostile environment, if you aren’t equipped or capable of staying there for long. At this point, however, you’re playing gate roulette. You might ﬁnd a more hospitable world or even another extrasolar colony, or you may just be taking the ﬁrst step on a long journey of wandering aimlessly through the gate network, perhaps never to see any signs of transhumanity again.
If you do head through the gate to another setting, or if for any reason you need to leave the vicinity of the remote gate you’re at, protocol states to leave a record behind with details on where you’ve gone. This allows any potential rescuers to follow your trail and potentially rescue you. The common methods to leave a note like this are to use a solar-powered radio broadcasting unit, place a well-marked document printed on durable plastic, or etch it with a laser into a rock.
Barring these options, the recommended course of action is to establish a camp near the gate and wait it out. If you’re equipped with a cornucopia machine and decent shelter, you may be able to survive indefinitely, barring boredom and other problems.
For colonies facing this sort of gate failure, plans are usually prepared in advance for food, energy, and resource rationing, especially if the colony is not self-sufficient. Action plans and protocols vary by sponsor. In severe circumstances, radical measures may be called for such as life support-induced hibernation or even voluntary/lottery-selected suicide.
==Hostile Gate Users== 
Though transhumanity has yet to make contact with any intelligent users of the gate network, there is an ongoing concern that we might encounter hostile entities who might employ the gates as a vector to assault transhuman colonies, or even our home solar system. In the off-chance this occurs, plans have been put into place to counter the threat.
Luckily, the gates themselves are effective choke-points, as they can be programmed to block out incoming connections. There is a concern, however, since our understanding of the gate control systems is incomplete at best, that a hostile entity might know or be able to devise a method to remotely disable such defenses. To counter this, there are options to destroy the gate’s functionality. The ﬁrst is to take down the gate’s operating system, theoretically leaving the gates intact but nonfunctional. The other is to simply destroy the gates themselves. This would take particularly potent weapons, which have the beneﬁt of likely destroying any force invading through the gates. This sort of scorched-earth policy would unfortunately destroy our own gate capabilities, but this measure might be necessary to buy us time to prepare defenses against a more capable foe. It is assumed that destroyed gates will rebuild themselves as the Discord Gate did, so such measures are temporary at best anyway.
==Rescue Operations== 
The standard response when a ﬁrst-in team or other expedition fails to check-in at a pre-established time is to send a search-and-rescue bot through. If this bot fails to return, ﬁnds evidence of the team’s demise, or ﬁnds nothing, the typical response is to write the gatecrashers off as lost, pull their backups, and ﬂag that extrasolar location as potentially dangerous. If the bot ﬁnds that the team is alive but in danger, and is unable to help, then a rescue mission may be called in (also assuming that a rescue is in the sponsor’s contract and they are willing to pay the exorbitant costs). On rarer occasions, rescue missions will be sent in to search for lost teams on exoplanets that look particularly promising for one reason or another and are likely candidates for revisiting. Occasionally, sponsors will pay for their own rescue missions rather than relying on the gate operators’ forces.
The current school of thought governing rescue missions is, quite simply, overkill. If there is the possibility of encountering a hostile presence, it is better to overwhelm that obstacle with numbers and ﬁrepower. To this end, rescue missions are usually led by a platoon of mechanized infantry. Combat morphs, battlesuits, armored vehicles, and heavily-armed combat drones will swarm through, bearing an assortment of offensive options, with the intention of securing the area, rescuing the survivors or their remains, and bugging out. Any opposition is faced with overwhelming concentrated ﬁre to buy time for an orderly rescue and escape.

[ [[Home]] | [[Setting Information]] | [[Gatecrashing Ops]] ]L