Sometimes things go well, and sometimes they go to shit. If you haven’t worked it out by now, that’s how life goes in the Ravaged Galaxy, and it’s especially how it goes for an Independent Crew. Right now though, we’re doing better than most crews. We’re not taking that many casualties. I haven’t had to write that many letters back home. We seem to be pulling in enough to keep The Stone Shark aloft, and the Void Dragons in coin. We’ve even managed to start storing some spare creds for the leaner times and ship upgrades. Not too many crews make it to that position. Of course, every once in a while, even for the best of the crews, things can go awry. That’s what happened on our last run.
Surprise Mother Fuckers!
A simple salvage run, we’d heard about some valuable loot hidden in a wasteland of a nearby planet, Dolomitry. We touched down and started looking around for it. Then, out of nowhere, another crew shows up looking for the same salvage. Not that uncommon, and we always prepare for it. These guys though, they weren’t interested in the loot. They seemed more interested in killing anything that moved. We fought back, obviously, but it quickly turned into a complete shit show.
We had actually managed to grab some loot from the area but couldn’t get it out and back to The Stone Shark. Times like this I really miss Jammer and Flames. They were great Runners. Every time we got near the loot we came under intense fire. Switch managed to grab it but lost a melee combat. Doc tried to pick it up but a sniper hit him. We only got out of there for two reasons.
The first is that I climbed a nearby building and took up a sniper position. Risky given the destruction this crew was raining down on us, but necessary. At the same time Shell-shock covered the area with as much smoke as she could.
Could you all just stop getting shot?
That helped but not a huge amount. The risk of taking a static position came to fruition for the other crew. Their sniper put a poison round through my left shoulder and knocked me off the tower. I got a relatively soft landing into a bush but I was still down, wounded and poisoned.
The rest of the crew wasn’t doing that much better. As well as Doc and Switch being down, Starburn took a pistol shot that incapacitated him. The remaining crew managed to push the enemy back just enough that we could grab our fallen comrades and get the hell out of there. Thankfully, the other crew didn’t follow us as we limped and dragged ourselves back to The Stone Shark, empty-handed but alive, barely.
The first person into the med bay was Doc. The auto systems were able to revive him in short order. He was Badly Wounded but able to do the doctoring thing. He triaged and cycled everyone through the med bay. Everybody made a Full Recovery except for Doc. He’d take a bit more time to heal.
Another Surprise
We blasted off from Dolomitry, vowing never to come back when the ‘verse decided to balance the scales for us. We picked up a contact on the ships scanner, the databanks returned an ‘unknown vessel class’ alert. Since there’s a register of all space-faring craft models that’s a rare alert. That meant it was either somebody’s personal project, highly unlikely and very stupid, or something completely new. Either way, it was worth a look.
As we approached the craft it came into view of the optical sensor array. It was a contradiction in terms. Approximately 150m long, and 50 wide, it was a large-ish craft. The design was clearly sleek in its intentions. The hull was smooth and curved, like a bullet, the engine outlets were enormous. This thing screamed speed from every line. I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover it could outpace some of the Void Racers. The contradiction came from the brutal add-ons. Arrays, gun turrets, domes, crenellations, what looked like statues, dotted the entire hull. It was insane. We couldn’t tell whether they had been added as part of the construction, or built on over time.
There were only two things I could say for sure, this craft was never going to land, and it had to be a new species. We were about to make First Contact.
Just Keep Talking
First Contact is not as rare as you might imagine in the Ravaged Galaxy. It’s not an everyday occurrence, but if you fly long enough it’s bound to happen to you, especially if you’re exploring the frontier parts. We tried hailing the ship and of course, the onboard translator started pitching a fit. It couldn’t work out what they were saying. Their ship didn’t have visual for the hail so vocal only, which made things a lot harder.
The trick here is to keep talking, and to keep them talking. If you get lucky, the translator starts to work out the base language. The more sounds available, the more chance there is. So, just keep talking.
This worked out for us and we were able to understand a limited amount of information that they were giving us. Nothing of import really, they’d come a long way and were escaping some tragedy on their planet. They’d basically flung themselves into space to seek out a new planet that they could colonise. As far as they knew, the rest of their species had perished. Sad, but them’s the breaks.
We exchanged some information, mostly around star charts. We got a nice little update to the surrounding area, including the location of their home planet. If what they said was true, we might want to swing by and check it out. Sounds like there’s plenty of loot and alien tech lying around that we could scavenge. My only concern is that the translator was 40% on the word tragedy. The next strongest possibility, at 35%, was plague. We are not going to a plague planet. Until we work that out, it’s off limits.
No More Surprises!
There wasn’t a lot more we could do at this point so we wished them well, we think, then headed off. As we got underway we took a better look at the star chart updates we had. As we’re looking over them Starburn starts to get all excited.
“Is that what I think that is?” he exclaimed.
I looked over at him, “How the shag would we know? What do you think it is?”
“That looks like the location of Imperial Research Station 37!”
Now, this rang a very distant, very dim, bell in the back of my brain. I glanced around, everyone else looked just as confused. Back to Starburn, “Go on.”
“It’s an old research station. It went offline right before the Last War gave us this delightful life in the galaxy. It was huge, thousands of tech heads and scientists working there on cutting edge research.
“The thing is, right before it went offline, it started broadcasting a keep out signal. It put itself under quarantine. Nobody knows why. Before anything could be done about it the Last War kicked off and the station was essentially forgotten about.
“I’ve been hearing rumours of it for a year or two, always from someone who knew someone who knew someone who’d been there. The sort of rumour you just don’t believe. Recently, they’ve been getting a bit more real, a bit less rumour. This star chart confirms it.” He pointed at the display, “that’s the location of the station.”
“Okay, so it’s an old research station, why do we care, Starburn?” I asked him.
“Because nobodies been there since it shut down. Not in a big way anyway, some other independent crews, absolutely, but nothing major. They can’t have been. Don’t you see, it’s got to be stuffed with new technology, research data, advanced weaponry, stuff you’ve never thought of never mind heard about. Imperial Research Station 37 might just be the biggest pay day we’ve ever come across. You know, the ‘big score’ that lets us buy a moon and retire kind of pay day!”
We looked at him in astonishment, “You’re serious aren’t you? If it’s that big a score, how come we’ve never heard of it before?”
“Well, if what I’ve heard is right, it’s only been rediscovered recently. It’s like the galaxy forgot about, like so many other things. If my info is accurate, and it looks like it is, a crew came across it while bounty hunting, went to investigate and started spreading the word. You know how folk get when they’re drunk and celebrating.”
“Huh, nifty. What’s the catch though? There’s always a catch.”
“Yeah, so, about that. Hadn’t quite got to that part yet. Along with the massive pay day, there is also massive risk. It seems the air is completely breathable. That’s confirmed by everyone, so no issue there. It also seems the station may, possibly, have just a little bit of Hastian’s Plague. By which I mean that seems to be what happened to everyone onboard.”
We all looked at him, stone-faced.
Doc chipped in, “Let me just check something here, you, Starburn, are suggesting that we voluntarily head into a space station that is known to have people infected with Hastian’s aboard it?”
“Eh, yes.”
“I see,” Doc said, “quick follow up. Do you have rabies? Have you completely lost your fucking mind?”
“Okay, no. I haven’t. But it must be manageable or nobody would have come back to tell about the discovery. I really think we should go. They pay off could be insane. Nightwind, what do you say?”
The whole crew looked at me. I considered it for a moment. Hastian’s was not something to play around with, but the victims of it were slow, shambling, and stupid. We could handle them. Also, the sound of that pay day was too good to pass up on. Finally, and most importantly though, I was super-bored scavenging back-water planets.
I looked back around the crew, judging their mood. Other than Doc they all looked like they were in.
“Sounds like a risk worth taking. Let’s do it. Everybody in?” They all nodded, I looked at Doc, “Well Doc? What about you?”
“Can’t say I’m thrilled but fuck it. Let’s get rich or die trying!”
“I’ll lay in the course!” Starburn said and headed for the navpod.
Imperial Research Station 37, here we come.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Joseph A. McCullough