Back at the ship things were pretty good. The crew was ecstatic, we’d managed to avenge Doc’s brother, and pick up a nice chunk of change on the way. I transmitted the evidence that we’d collected of Gimmet Y’s demise. It wasn’t long before the Keepers sent the bounty through.
Meanwhile, Starburn passed on the data we downloaded from Gimmet’s drives. Enough local planetary authorities were after information on his activities that we bagged a few hundred credits in additional rewards.
We’d also been able to salvage some Trade Goods that we could sell on to the right people when we found them. It was mostly medical supplies and the like. Doc selectively restocked the med bay from them. He wasn’t too keen on that but decided the perishables would be fine. Drugs and such. He flat out refused to consider the more durable tools. Too painful for him I guess, understandable for sure. Not a problem, decent medical tools are always tradable.
We’re not done yet
So once Doc had patched everybody up the party started. For him anyway. Never seen him look so relaxed and happy. Nitro, Shell Shock and Starburn joined him in the celebrations. For everyone else, there was still work to do.
Muscovite 2 was a backwater world in the asshole of solar systems that nobody came to visit. It’s probably why Gimmet Y was there in the first place. Plenty of idiot yokels to butcher and nobody around to put a stop to him. Regardless of that though, somebody had obviously had hopes for the place at some point. Remember that Space Station we passed by? I’d decided that we should definitely check it out on our way past.
It was an ancient looking thing, whether it really was or had just suffered from micro-meteorites and star flares was anybody’s guess. Obviously powered down and abandoned it had an unusual block look to it. Most designers seem to like their space stations to have curves and other stupid stuff like that. Not this one. It was an hexagonal prism, the grey of raw starship steel, and not really all that big. Just a couple of decks, a docking port rather than a landing bay.
Safe to board?
There was no obvious venting of fuel, gas, radiation or the like. Looked safe enough but we were still going to have go in under low oxygen, rad protocols. Given the size of the place, and the mood in the crew, I was only going to board with Sarge and Switch. One can watch my back, the other can open the goodies. The rest, the still sober ones anyway, are ready to board if we get into some sort of trouble. You can never be too careful with an abandoned space station. No matter how stable they look, the lack of maintenance can mean they fall apart as soon as you open the door.
The three of us suited up, checked our comms and O2 were good, grabbed our gear and headed for the ships airlock. Sarge went into the station first, the beams from his helmet torches carving through the darkness in front of it. It’s always pretty eerie going into one of these places. I’ve been through a few in my time and the sense of lifelessness is just freaky. No idea what happened to the people here, did they leave or are you about to round the corner into a corpse? No way to know. You really need your balls screwed on tight for these things. Hence, Sarge goes first. I’ve come to realise that his nutsack comes in a cargo hauler. Nothing phases him, he really has seen some shit.
How not to die
I’m sure you’ve seen the movcasts where they first go to the bridge, then they split up and get power running and take their suits off and blah blah fucking blah. That’s all bullshit. That’s why it’s a movcast. Those are actors and have no idea what they’re doing. There are some rules here:
- Don’t breathe the air, regardless of how safe your scanner says it is – you may die
- Don’t split up for any reason – you may die
- Don’t hang around unless you have to – you may die
- Don’t turn the power core on – it may explode, and you may die
- Don’t investigate the cause of dead bodies – it may still be there, and you may die
You get the general trend here, right? Don’t do the stupid thing and then you won’t die. Probably. All that in mind, our first port of call was going to be the engine room.
It wasn’t hard to find, for obvious reasons it was very close to the airlock. The second door we peered through was obviously the engine bay. It looked quite undamaged, and that it would power up without too much effort, but see rule number 4. Rather than get a space station we weren’t going to use functional we just pulled off the useful spare parts. Anything that was compatible with The Stone Shark was salvaged. We take enough damage that free spares would always be useful.
There was also an older climate module. Not that common these days and useful for places where you need internal weather control. Every space station has one, but with a little ingenuity you can adapt them for, e.g. greenhouses on planetary surfaces. Very handy to frontier folk trying to survive against the elements. A module like this, should sell quite easily.
Having stripped the engine room we left our pickings by the airlock and continued on into the station. There were 6 more rooms on this level, all of them identical. Rectangular, 2 bunk beds in each, a recharge station in the corner, bathroom included Enough space for 24 sentient humanoids and 6 robots. Crew of at least 30 for the station. Luxury on a station this size, they could have packed twice that number in here.
Slim Pickings
Every single one of the rooms was completely bare, not even a toothpick left behind. Heartening in a way, it means they left by choice, not by emergency. Makes it slightly safer for us.
We climbed up onto the second level where the main facilities would be, mess hall, bridge, med-bay, armoury, science lab, and so on. We’re still working by torchlight, the darkness being total. Sarge and Switch do seem to be pretty calm though.
Most of the rooms were the same story as the crew berths. Completely empty. The only things that we we came across were fixed in place. Computer banks, cupboards, stuff you couldn’t take and wouldn’t need even if you could. With nothing to salvage, we headed back to the airlock. We picked up the engine parts and made our way back into The Stone Shark.
Once we were through the decontamination process again, we were clear to enter the ship, stow the salvage and our gear, and get under way. A pretty successful exploration all things considered. We got some parts, and nobody died. That’s a win in my book.
And yes, we have no idea what happened to the station or why it was there. This is the part in the movcast where they go on about how they must solve this mystery and a two season story arc is set up for Captain Thunderdong to roam the Ravaged Galaxy with his perfect hair and enormous biceps punching random species in the face. The reality though is that we don’t need to solve this, we don’t care, and we’re heading on to the next job.
Time to join Doc for a drink.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Joseph A. McCullough