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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowdancer" data-source="post: 1203400" data-attributes="member: 515">Prologue Date: 100-993 Location: Warehousing and fuel depot on Urlainn in the Alief system, Linkworlds Cluster, Ley Sector, Gateway Domain.The comm sounded in the drive room, interrupting the steady stream of curses. Martha Smythe hit the accept button. "What." Fatigue made her voice flat."Martha, prep for lift. We’re out of here," Trader Captain Wilson said matter–of–factly."No way, I still haven’t found the flutter in the jump drive initialize, there’s a liquid hydrogen leak, and I’ve been in this God–forsaken out–of–date piece–of–junk suit for the last 24 hours. There’s no way the ship’s ready to lift. Also the cargo has just finished unloading and they haven’t started loading the next one.""I know the state of the drive and cargo, we are lifting ASAP. Do it."Martha mused, "This was the first time the airthief had abandoned a potential profit, it must be something fairly big." The stream of curses resumed as she turned back to the drive.Three hours later the Free Trader Bray Keaven floated well clear of Urlainn and Wilson walked into the drive room in full vacc suit. The intense cold of the venting hydrogen filled the room and obscured the engineer working on the drive itself."I thought you said that you’d fixed the vent," Wilson said."Yup, it’s fixed," came Martha’s reply. "It’ll still take about three hours before the room warms up enough that I can take this blasted suit off and have my first proper scratch in two days. Now that we are away from the port, why are we leaving so soon?""Well, it’s a little complicated. You know there’s a full–scale war going on down on Alief.""They’ve finally kicked off a big one? I thought they were just going to keep playing tit–for–tat forever." Martha didn’t sound particularly interested; dirt farmers were often having little tiffs, as long as they stayed down the well, she was perfectly unconcerned."This one is a little different," Wilson said. "As well as the normal range of nukes, they have all started getting sick. So far it’s still contained on the planet but I’m a little nervous.""I just don’t fancy trying a jump till I’ve run a full second stage test. But the early result looks good.""We don’t have time, I want to be out of here before the port authority does anything silly," the ship’s captain said. "One of the customs crew came down with a cough recently, and with everyone being so nervous, the port master could declare a clamp down.""You’re the boss. If we try the jump, I’ll watch everything and abort if I don’t like the look of it. I’m not going to let you send us walking into the Black.""Just so long as you don’t abort unless you actually see something wrong. I don’t want to take a misstep either, but I want to be out of here." With that the Captain left the room.All alone with her thoughts Martha thought for a long time. She didn’t like the Captain, he had always paid too much attention to irrelevancies and not enough to the ship, but he had never been this careless before. Her curiosity itched away at her until she wandered over to comm and hit the eavesdrop she had installed two years ago. Now she could here what was happening in range of any of the intercoms. She caught the end of a conversation. The Captain’s voice was raised in anger:" . . . care how you do it, I want that message wiped. If we didn’t receive it, then we haven’t done anything wrong. Just purge it and we’re scott free."The reply was too far from the intercom but Martha had no doubt that the Supercargo, despite being a stickler for the rules, would do the captains bidding — loyalty ran strong in the Bray Company.Two minutes later, the jump warning came through and the drive performed beautifully. All the time she was hoping for a flutter so she could abort, but without knowing what had really happened, the engines were her only concern.Eight hours later, just as Martha was about to climb out of her vacc suit and crash into bed, the Captain collapsed, vomiting blood. He died before they could get him to a med kit.By the time the ship left jump space 169 hours later, Martha was the only surviving crewman and had been in her suit for nine days straight.Date: 107-993 Location: Insystem at Sentry, Linkworlds Cluster.Aboard the Customs Cruiser "Flit" (Gazelle Class), the "Alert" sounds and the crew slams into their positions. The Captain, still in her leotard from exercise, listens to the steady reports of ready systems pouring into the bridge. "Well, why are we at alert?" she finally asks, after all stations report in.The Comm Officer responds, "A Far Trader arrived outsystem from Alief and responded to hail. When it came in, the computer triggered a full alert. Apparently they have a type D illness." The Comm Officer’s voice was hushed with dread."You know I can never remember things like that, will someone tell me what a type D is.""Ma’am, type D is 100% mortality, unknown vector. Apparently there’s a bug over there that is killing everything it meets and they have no idea how it is spreading."Two hours later, the four jump–capable warships docked at Sentry departed to the corners of the cluster to impose a full quarantine. The Marquis had declared an Imperial emergency and every commercial vessel was under immediate imperial charter. They would be jumping out as a fleet to Alief to investigate and bring aid. </blockquote>

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