Epistolary Experiment (12/30)
Captain’s log, 11204.9. We’ve come alongside the eighteenth belt mining facility in our securing patrol of Ódeln System. On our way in, we tracked what appeared to be a merchant freighter inbound to the station, presumably lacking the delta-v to go elsewhere.
Well, it wasn’t a freighter. At close range, we profiled it as some sort of armed mercenary ship. Her radiators went cold and reactors powered down shortly after arriving at the station, and we detect no thermal hot-spots. Nonetheless, I have ordered boarding parties to secure both the ship and the station, while we cover them with the ship’s guns. The latter party has already taken a number of these mercenaries into custody, and is returning them under guar–
Intruder alert, intruder alert. Fighting in shuttle bay two. Security team’s weapons fired in shuttle –
Hull breach in engineering, section four. Boarders in engineering, ventral section four.
Initiate security alert. Security teams to engineering.
Compliant. Boarders in engineering, ventral section five. System faults, ventral section five. Injector control compromised. Reactor scram. Reactor scram.
Full lockdown, all engineering sections! Stand by for gas protocol —
Boarders in engineering, core section. I’m sorry, Captain, I can’t do that.
Specify!
Primary command structure is overridden. Command permissions are not found.
Res-
HA! HARGH! This is Strike Leader Krallnith of the Interstellar Interceders ship Cunning Swine, and I am standing in your computer core. You know that means your ship now works for me, the way you build ‘em. Now, if you have a fondness for oxygen, I suggest you tell your crew to lay down arms and report to the brig. You have six minutes.
– transcribed from the logs of the Interstellar Interceders ship Scrapyard Value Only,
formerly VNS Fraternity
VENERI (OSIS DEEP) – An emergency meeting of the Central Committee of the Socionovist Association was convened today at the request of the representatives of the People’s State of Bantral. Neither those representatives nor other sources close to the Committee have commented publicly on the purpose of this meeting, but in light of the ongoing unlawful and unjustifiable occupation of much Bantine space by Republican forces and the State’s contemptible betrayal by the Conclave, in its refusal to acknowledge their obligations to the defense of all, this reporter can only presume that mutual defense measures are being strongly considered by the Association.
[APPROVED FOR DISSEMINATION – Meer har-Tal Ankór, Office of Desirable Truths and Detestable Falsehoods]
– That Bullshit Right There, Independent Worlds Router
Yeah, as if the Bants wouldn’t shit acid out their nostrils at the sight of an Accord task force violating their precious territorial space…
– Extranet Opinions, Independent Worlds Router
“So there we were, down on Tarqil to get the comms center back up and running, and we’d cleared out the Vonnies and were hacking on the gennies, and we saw this trail going off into the highmoss. Can’t leave that alone, so I take my squad and we follow it, and the further along we go, the more shot up everything gets. The moss is all torn up, there’re kalatri bodies and bits of bodies, wrecked equipment, enough spent powercells to equip a regiment, all sorts of crap.”
“A couple of miles down, we get to a clearing with a heap of bodies in it. A big heap. A couple of squads, at least, of the lizard-boys scattered around one of their trackers, and the armor’s half ripped off that. And it’s on fire.”
“So we poke around some, and we find a life-pod, and there’s a kaeth in it, more gel than skin, looks like, and we figure that might explain it. Except the up-timer on the pod’s been running for more’n an hour and this heap, at least, is fresher than that, and anyway, someone had to stuff him in the pod, right?”
“And then an EM alert bleeps, and we look up, all six of us, and there’s this ciseflish standing on the burning tracker, and he’s holding this big, ugly bastard of a sluggun that’s taller than he is. And we’re all just gaping at him, and eventually Meliané gets it together enough to ask what the hells happened? Chirpy little sod just looks back at us like we’re the crazy ones and squeaks ‘Violence?’”
“…yeah, we bought him a lot of drinks after the op.”
– a conversation with Spec. Rilka mor-Dantek, 93rd Imperial Legion (“the Wrench Wenches”)