The crew of the PMM Garishi have a down cycle to relax after their endeavour checking the monitoring bouys around the planet Pcias.
No-Haa retreats to his state room to brush up on his mechanics. His door intercom goes and its Twiggy looking for someone to play games with her. No-Haa dismisses her curtly, uninterested in socialising with the young doctor. Later that evening, Geryen knocks on No-Haa’s door. “No games,” he grumpily answers.
Geryen though isn’t here to play. He’s brought No-Haa’s bundle of arms, collected from him at Pcias station. No-Haa checks through his collection of energy and slug rifles. Whatever Geryen says to him next falls on death ears. No-Haa is fully absorbed in his task.
Leaving No-Haa, Geryen bumps into the Captain, Esthel. She’s doing the rounds, getting herself familiar with the ship. Command of the system-bound but high tech rescue ship has energised the noble woman. She asks Geryen a question she’s been asking all the crew she meets. “What motivates you, Geryen? What are you hoping to get out of this position?”
The engineer is focused on the operations of the ship and plays his longer ambitions close to his chest. A different response, Esthel thinks, than the young doctor’s. She just wanted adventure away from books and studying for her medical exams. Esthel is already thinking about ways of motivating her crew, and she’s definitely starting to think of them as her crew.
Geryen heads over to see his old friend Twiggy, the two having bonded years ago during a pirate attack. He hands her the revolver she turned in back at the station. Twiggy acts surprised, having forgotten all about it. She confides in him that she has no clue how to use the weapon and Geryen is quick to instruct her on rule 0 when it comes to guns: never point them at something you don’t intend to kill. She places the gun on her desk, pointing away from them. Geryen suggests she get some lessons from No-Haa and is already thinking about setting up a shooting range in the large, unused cargo bay.
Whilst they’re chatting a call comes in from the ship’s AI. They’ve received a distress call from a ship on the other side of the planet. They head to the bridge, joined by Esthel. The ship’s transponder identifies it as the free trader LWSS Galatea. The ship is not responding to long-range hails.
Under Esthel’s orders, Errol the pilot puts in a course around the planet to rendesvouz with the ship. As they get into sensor range, they note the ship’s thrusters and M-drive are off but otherwise the ship looks operational. Its deep scanner sensor array, not standard on a ship of its class, is pointing at the gas giant near the station. But it is way out of position to refuel and in violation of the red zone edict.
Esthel tries short range comms as the ship approaches and gets a response. A young boy identifying himself as Ivan tells her the captain is incapacitated and the rest of the crew dead. Only him and his sister, Ivanka, are able to answer. Reassuring them, Esthel asks them to return to their state room and await rescue.
The search crew prepare for boarding. The young passengers are unable to initiate docking, so Geryen uses the grappling arm to bring the free trader inline. Once their airlocks aligned, a short void secure passage extends joining them. After failing to override the controls remotely, Geryen overloads the power circuits and forces the airlock open.
The ship has a putrid smell in the cargo bay which becomes noxious when Geryen opens one of the state rooms. There an older man looks like he’s been boiled alive. Geryen throws up in the washroom.
Meanwhile, Twiggy has spotted the two young passengers and goes in to reassure them. She notes that they seem to have some expensive cybernetic implants. This seems to arouse Esthel’s suspicion along with the fact they are the only two survivors. When she arrives in the bridge she finds the pilot and astrogator dead at their consoles. The captain is slumped in his office, the door locked.
Esthel overrides the Galatea’s security systems and opens the captain’s office door. As she reads through the ship logs, she orders No-Haa to take the children to the brig and Twiggy to come and see to the captain. The two children are scared and reluctant to leave. After some soul searching, Twiggy leaves No-Haa and goes to see to the captain. Sensing they have no choice against the dangerously armed No-Haa, the children are led to the brig of the Garishi.
The captain of the Galatea is alive although in a coma. If not for his articial heart and tough constitution, he would surely have died by now. Piecing the ship’s logs together, Esthel surmises the captain must have initiated the series of jumps that led the ship here. The unusual route was in order to avoid entanglements that may mean they needed to explain the death of their rich passenger. However, judging by the death of the crew, things got worse faster than the captain expected.
Esthel remains suspicious of the two kids, awaiting Twiggy’s post-morten examination of the crew. Twiggy proves to be an incredibly capable medic. She confirms that the crew died from ingesting some hostile bacteria that seems to have also been the cause of the captain’s condition.
Later on the Garishi, she examines some of the grey ooze that Geryen found in one of the open cargo containers. “Shell fish gone bad,” she surmises. It seems the kids didn’t eat the food the wealthy passenger brought on board, sticking to a diet of rations and food their parents had provided for them.
No-Haa and Errol, fully dressed in rescuit suits, load the the dead bodies into bags and put them in the low berths on board the rescue ship. The Galatea is towed back to station and a full report made. On the way, Twiggy performs remarkable surgery on Liam Coyle, the free trader’s captain, saving him from long-term brain damage.
Back on station, the two children wait to be collected and the crew of the Gerishi get some much needed downtime. Esthel who had pocketed the loose credits found on the free trader, distributes some to her crew as gratitude for their hard work. Twiggy checks in on Liam, who expresses his thanks and tells her that she has him at a debt. One he intends to pay back when he can.
Eventually the crew are back on the Gerishi heading out in expectations of their next job. After a couple of cycles of quiet, a transmission comes in. Its message is broken up, possibly being jammed.
“Free….. Somsoria…. under attack…. pirates!”
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