Fwd: Dark Station Intro

[Abrigon]

Some possibilities for sure..

Mike

- Do not blame me for your problems - Joshua

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Nicole Massey <ny...@gypsyheir.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 17:14
Subject: Dark Station Intro
To: Abrigon <abr...@gmail.com>

(Mike, feel free to forward this on to the others)
He was a strange little man, all bushy eyebrows and a big head. While he talked he kept his hands interlaced, stretched out in front of him with his palms facing outward. For some reason none of the group could remember much more than that.
“You see… I have this problem… and I need the right group with the right ship to do something about it. It’s a humanitarian thing… well, no, it’s still a merchant thing too because I can pay well for the right group with the right ship… do you think you’re that group with that ship? Maybe? Okay, that might be good enough. Here’s my problem. I’ve got a group of scientists… all good people, smart as an Ancient, each one of them… Well, no, not literally, but it’s a figure of speech. So they’re working on something special… something that’ll make the megacorps stand up and take notice… no, that’s not a metaphor, that’s the literal truth.  Yes, they will… If… they don’t starve to death. Okay, I guess I should explain a bit more. They’re on a research station in a system with no planets… I don’t know why there aren’t any, it’s just some asteroids, and nothing much there either. So no reason for anyone to stop there to fuel up, no reason for anyone to colonize anything, no reason to go there at all. And you see… I sent a ship for them… reliable… good captain and good crew, well-maintained too… And I haven’t heard anything from the ship. I don’t know, they might have made it, and everything’s okay. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this… nothing I can point to… but you know… a bad feeling. So I want you to go there, a fresh load of food and scrubber parts and all the other stuff they need… Oh, I know it’ll fit in your ship’s hold. But I’m glad you have some of your group who can fight… Because, you know… I haven’t heard any word of course… but pirates can be anywhere… of course there’s no word of that… but I’ve got this feeling, you know?  So I want to be safe. I’ve got a program that can let your navigation program get you there, and it has hailing frequencies and the code to get you into the dock. And I pay well… very well. So, are you interested?”
Now, looking at the research station, that doesn’t seem like the best idea. First there’s the ship, one a lot like the one with the group he hired looking at everything they can, trying to see if there are pirates or something else. The ship is tethered to the station, so the dock is free, and it seems to be keeping with the station’s orbit. But something’s odd about that research station. Dim light comes out from its windows. It’s not rotating, so that means no gravity inside. And that dock… every single time it comes around, it looks wrong – more like the maw of something monstrous. But it’s a docking port, and it doesn’t have teeth or suckers or tentacles or anything like that. But still, something doesn’t look right. Is a job still a job when the destination gives everyone the creeps? And how does that fit with contracts and the merchant code? Does integrity trump fear? After all, he said more than once, something doesn’t feel right.