Once the travellers recover from their battle with the pirate ship, they gather fresh supplies and head back onboard the PMM Garishi. It’s not long before they receive a masked distress call being relayed by the monitoring network around Psiac.
Esthel suspects the distress call is coming from a naval ship. Relaying rescue calls via bouy networks is standard operating procedure when the navy doesn’t want to give away their ship’s location.
No-Haa goes to work on the comms station piecing together strands of the scrambled message. He manages to identify the signal as originating from the Free Trader Sacaggen – the same ship they had noted being treated unusually by the customs inspectors. He also works out that the ship’s manuevering drive is inoperable and its hull has been breached. Most importantly, he pin points its precise location to a deserted island in the temperate part of the ocean.
A quick report is dispatched back to station and Errol punches the thrust to bring the ship to the monitoring line around the planet. Repeated efforts to raise the Sacaggen on comms fail. Their duty to rescue the ship overrides the injunction to maintain the red zone, so they decide to move into rescue.
Esthel devises a plan to minimise being noticed by the sophonts on the planet. Coming in hard through the planet’s desert region and flying over the ocean, they hope to avoid being spotted by any of the settlements on the planet. The manuevre is executed expertly by Errol but there is no immediate way to know whether the locals notice them.
On close approach they note the incongruity of what they are seeing versus what the distress call identified. Crashed into the sea, partially submerged under water is a large liner with the markings Amishi. Not the free trader they were expecting.
Nearby on a small island there is a ship wreck of an entirely different sort. A magnificent sail boat of local design.
Errol puts the Garishi down on some rocks inbetween the island and the sinking liner. No-Haa leads out the crew sans pilot, fiercely securing the area. As he scans for potential hostiles, he picks up a distress call from an Imperial VIP’s health monitor. The signal comes from the sail boat nearby, not the Amishi. On the ground, it is clear that the Amishi is sinking and there is limited time to effect a rescue.
The party split with No-Haa escorting Dr. Twiggy to find the Imperial VIP. They find signs of survivors from the ship wreck a decade before and more recent desecration of their graves. The sail boat is stripped of everything of interest. On the middle deck, the doctor finds the wounded Imperial VIP. He’s lost a lot of blood thanks to two gunshot wounds in the stomach. Twiggy gets to work stabilising him with her medkit. “I’m going to have to take him to medbay if we’re going to save his life.”
Meanwhile, Esthel and Geryen look for a way into the liner. Geryen bounds up the hull like a mountain goat but Esthel trips and slides back into the sea. She suggests they try a different approach. Geryen returns and finds the perfect spot to attach a breaching charge. They blow a hole into the cargo deck, a few metres above the water line.
Enterring the ship cautiously, the pair note all the cargo containers have slid towards the partly submerged bow of the ship, blocking sight of whatever is there. Two Vargr survivors come out from beyond some crates identifying themselves as passengers and offering to tell them what has happened on the ship. Esthel is not interested and orders them off the ship immediately. She leads Geryen up towards a doorway to the stern of the ship where they find a non-functional lift to the upper deck.
Clambering up the ladder railings by the lift, the pair arrive on the upper deck. They try several hatch doors but all are locked. Geryen jimmies one door and they move into what looks to be a steam room. They give it a quick search but find nothing of interest. Another hatch door is unlocked by the nimble-fingered engineer. The pair find themselves in a corridor lined with passenger state rooms.
Moving forward, Esthel notices a door marked for “Authorised Crew Only” with a keycard reader. As she hacks the reader, Geryen listens at the passenger room opposite. He hears movement inside, so he knocks. They identify themselves as the rescue crew. A dark haired women answers. She introduces herself as Saress Aten, the cruise liner’s medic.
Back on the Garishi, Twiggy has got the VIP conscious and stable. His name is Paul Ramaeda, a distant cousin of the Duchess of Mora. He responds well to her gentle bedside manner, telling her that the cruise liner Amishi was hijacked. His bodyguard was killed when he noticed something was wrong. Paul grabbed her weapon and tried to warn the other passengers when he was shot. To avoid the embarassment to his family of being found on this illicit cruise ship, he jumped into the water hoping to die there. But his suvival instincts kicked in and he swam to the boat where he passed out. He asks the doctor not to mention his presence in her reports, offering to make it well worth her while to spare his family the embarassment.
A similar story of hijacking is relayed to Geryen by the medic Saress. She believes the pilot was killed and this caused the crash. She heard the hijackers discussing this and how one of their number was killed. Based on her testimony, Geryen believes there is at least two hijackers onboard still.
No-Haa leaves Twiggy to head to the Amishi and directs the two Vargr and the medic he encounters to the medbay of the rescue ship. He then continues on to join up with Esthel and Geryen as they make towards the bridge of the downed liner.