So we arrived, with no further incidents on board! We woke up Aida and Atta, and told them if anyone asks, they are our new engineering crew. We parked the ship in Dock 9. I see we have five other ships docked on Vakpod Station: two Azlanti, two Vesk, and one Sovyrian Pact ship. I can’t decide if this mission will be fun or awkward.
wererat
Rae, NG Ysoki Mechanic Xenoarcheologist born on Akiton, lately of Absalom Station. Hover Drone named "Widget 2.0."
Rae arrived on station about six months ago. She's friends with a Vesk Soldier named Sresaka, and a Lashunta Envoy, Lexx. Tolerates the Pahtra Operative, Ash.
Look What the Cat’s Dragged in
So, a couple things happened at once. Not my fault! We were reading something at the farthest range of our sensors as we escorted the AbidarCorp’s Resolute freighter Corona through Drift Space on a 6.5 day trip to the Vakpod system, when we experienced a drop in power. After Sresaka found the problem, but could not easily squeeze into the area, Widget and I headed down to the maintenance tunnels to see what was going on, and found boric acid dripping onto the power conduit. That’s bad, and I didn’t have time to do more than fix it before we felt something jar the entire ship. Half of the forward shielding was down. I spent the next few minutes fixing that.
Turns out, Ash decided to chase after that thing on the edge of our sensors. That thing was a ship with no life signs, so possibly it is a Corpse Fleet small explorer. I think Ash wanted to ram the darned thing (I heard him saying we could just scrape along their hull with our shields), and Brock must have convinced him not to. However, we did end up in combat with it briefly, and thankfully Sresaka is already quite adept with our new weapons system. Soon, the other ship left our sensor range again. We’ve since caught up to the Corona.
I need to find out how boric acid ended up on power conduit.
Space: the final frontier
We were allowed in to see Venn and his surviving crew. I didn’t get to go through the usual “how are we related” with Venn’s ysoki science officer Scamp. We obviously both knew Venn, for starters. Our rescued ghouls are safely ensconced at the Eoxian Embassy, our ship is ready (?) and we have a new assignment.
The church of Triune occasionally adds a drift beacon in the Vast in Near Space. There is one system AbidarCorp had been surveying when they realized Vakpod has a sentient species on it.
The area in question is orbiting a Class F star. It’s a water world, and the Seli are a race of empathic sea sponges. Who like tech, but hate weapons. There is a space station orbiting Vakpod, where we are to go first. Like the last few trade negotiations met with disaster in Drift Space before arriving in the planet’s watery surface. We are to bring two Brenneri (empathic?) diplomats.
Widget just flew past me wearing water wings, so I guess we are going to Vakpod.
On a countdown to zero, take a ride on the nightmare machine
Well, we got away and the asteroid, station, and all but two friendly ghouls and four of Venn’s crew (well, Venn and three crewmen) are saved. Future Widget isn’t with us. I finally realized as we were fighting through the last of the Corpse Fleet that he wasn’t hiding out of fear–he was wiring himself in to make sure the station blew when we got clear of it. I would like to think that he did it to save us, or change the timeline, or whatever, and that by blowing up with the station, he saved himself too. But do drones have the ability to plan like that?
And that darned gravball card from four years from now is still here.
Gunter gleiben glauchen globen
We moved into the next room on the station, and fought our way through another half dozen soldiers. I don’t mind shooting them so much, but I wish they’d stop shooting us! Please don’t shoot us!