CACHE-AUDIO INTERCEPT
NETWORK: Nava Station, XK-44 High Orbit
FROM: Indigo Vu, Chief of Security
TO: Duff Song, Senior Account Manager, Profit and Risk
“Mr. Song—Duff—regarding your last message, I’m not sure what you expect me to do about the…bag situation. To answer, it was Ms. Klossner that pulled it out of ventilation after some smell complaints in hab block four. We’re still holding her in lockup, but we can’t do so legally for over twenty four hours. Frankly, who she tells after that is her business. I’m a security officer, not Statesec—suppression isn’t in my payroll.”
“And she’s going to say something, I can guarantee you that. I don’t care what is or isn’t in my contract, Duff. I don’t collect payroll to be your lil’ badgeboy. I went ahead and ran the contents through forensics. It’s Thokozani in that bag. He…God, he wasn’t security, but emergency services is right next door to us.”
“And for the record, Duff. Yes. I do think we need to keep looking. We didn’t find his body—just his skin.”
The player is aboard the light gunboat Pitchport which suffered return fire in battle with a raiding corvette. As the Pitchport survives on speed instead of armor, this engagement nearly killed her. A few missions later the cast will receive a different hub, but for now the player roams the Pitchport observing interactables and catching up with characters after the battle.
Player, approaching a shredded bulkhead: I can see into Ops through the bullet holes. Huh. Someone is working on the LIDAR array. Is that Mac?
Macintosh, Gunner: “Faith! Ah, [CHAR], you’re going to burst my heart ghosting around. Thought we might have been boarded.” Mac raps his knuckles against his helmet “Can’t hear a damn thing in this.”
Player: “With the damage we’ve taken you could see them coming from any end of the ship.”
Mac: “Aye, we’ve got windows for walls, they flakked us good while Jan was wrestling the controls. We’re lucky the bastards didn’t just jump over and climb through the holes they made in poor Pitchport.”
Player: “You seem tense, Mac.”
Mac: “I…no, I’m not ‘tense’ it’s just…”
Mac casts an eye over to the front of the ship to the pilot’s cupola. Blood rests on the deck plates, roiling in hard vacuum, plush like red moss. Oh god, you just remembered something.
Quest Log Updated: Find Jan’s Missing Arm
Mac: “She wasn’t ready, [CHAR]. I kept telling you, blast, you’ve seen her flight experience, and now we’re…where we are.”
Player: “I still believe in her, Mac, even after today. She’s in good hands with Ezekiel in medical. She’ll survive this.”
Mac: “Survive, sure boss, but she’ll be seeing this fight play out in a hundred configurations on the back of her eyelids.” Mac’s left arm goes slack, letting his curled fingers brush gently against the metal of his own cybernetic leg, feeling the nicks and dents even through his stained work gloves. Before he can say anything further, Wahti enters. In her hand is a deformed bolt of metal. The penetrator of a twenty milimeter round.
Wahti, Engineer and CQC: “[CHAR], Mac, we’ve got a situation. We’ve taken twenty of these to the Pitchport’s spine.
Mac: “Twenty you said?”
Wahti: “Counted every one. We’re lucky. Any more fire and it would have cracked into the magazine, evaporated us.”
Player: “But we’re intact. What’s the problem, then?”
Wahti: “The problem is that we can’t put the Pitchport under any kind of thrust, transit or combat, or she’ll unwind. Violently.”
A groan cuts through the Pitchport, and all the plates and cables that make up her body shudder like so much dross. A beast with broken bones, broken further still by her own mechanical musculature. The raiders have killed her.
Quest Log Updated: Moving On, Moving Out