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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy" data-source="post: 9446448" data-attributes="member: 1412">It was already late in the evening so we had to hurry. I paid the bill and as we left we asked a few questions about Miskom. We didn’t get anything other than he can’t keep a crew because he is a drunk. We headed out to the mall and picked up some last minute shopping. The barman had told us that Miskom liked vodka from Lousy (Sheesh) so I went to pick a couple of bottles up. Fox bought a robobar! Tris went to buy something from a medical supplier or something. He’s a bit odd, but ok. He was talking about rats in mazes or something. An army of rats? Super rats? It was a bit weird, whatever it was. I found a gun shop and picked up a shotgun with a gyrostabiliser. Tris, Fox and I picked up snub pistols and Fox grabbed an ACR. I don’t think they have ever fired one so I’ll be standing behind them if that gets broken out. Noah sloped off somewhere, I’m not sure where, after agreeing to meet at Bay 2 first thing.We all returned to our various digs and packed up. I doubt it took any of us long. We certainly all made it to Bay 2 in plenty of time. You know what it is like at New Rome, like most places - a cursory look at us was enough for security and they pointed us to the Helena. She was an A2 far trader, newly painted and looking pretty trim. She was 100-200 years old. You know how these tramp traders can be, so I was pleased with what I saw. Miskom was there and he quickly led us to the bridge and sorted out our clearance. We bunked down and got the tour. You’re right, it was a bit depressing. A few years ago I had command of a patrol corvette, I’d distinguished myself fighting Sword Worlder’s and I was looking for command of a destroyer. Now here I was being told how the loading crane has been replaced by grav pallets. All the same, beggars can’t be choosers and everything looked ok. Engineering looked good but a little overdue its monthly maintenance. It was fine though. We have an empty dock for an air/raft. Yeah, that’s right, I need to pick my new one up at Glisten. Where was I? Oh, yeah, we got the tour - we have a turret but it doesn’t work. Apparently Miskom got stiffed by Bracero Industries who fitted it. It will fire and even launch a missile but it can’t move so if we want to shoot something with the laser it needs to be behind us. Not that it bothered me. My first ship was a light cruiser with a spinal mount. I’m not relying on a beam laser to stay alive! Then deliveries arrived.You know how Bracero control a lot of the ship’s food around Glisten way, anyway, Miskom won’t have it aboard. So we had a delivery of fresh food, which was really good to see. Then some liquid polymers arrived and I had my first play with the grav pallets, which was quite fun. We also picked up a mail drum. Yeah, one of the off-network 5t things - that’s right, we weren’t technically eligible. We really needed a functioning turret to carry mail but Miskom slipped a bundle of credits to the guy delivering the drum. We also had 20t of atmospheric condensers already loaded. No, just the polymers are speculative, the condensers are haulage. So we have 45t in our hold and that leaves 15t empty, which is not ideal. I’m hoping Miskom can pick up some more when we drop the converters off at Egypt. Our contract is for 4,000 cr per month or 8% of profits each, whichever is higher. Miskom wants to make it to Mertactor via Egypt and be back in the Glisten system within 8 weeks of today. It is - am I the only one who doesn’t know about corporate contract allocation day? Anyway, Miskom wants to be back so he can bid for some. We need to make at least 5 jumps so we have plenty of time assuming we don’t dawdle.We each have roles on board. I’m reserve pilot, Fox is astrogation (university wasn’t such a waste after all, eh?), Tris is engineering, although his main experience is with life support, and Noah is gunner. I think Noah is going to have an easy time of it. I bunked down next to the airlock and ship’s locker. Yeah, of course, there are vacc. suits for all of us. In good condition, well, good enough. A few shotguns and the usual bits and bobs. My cabin, the airlock and the bridge all lead into a common area.We didn’t have long to acclimatise to the ship. After our tour and then loading the hold we had an hour or so before our launch window. Miskom stood over my shoulder as I took us out and set off in the direction of our jump point. Fox set to the maths for our jump and Tris was in engineering. It all went pretty smoothly. Miskom gave orders for us to be going slow when we jumped, which made it a little easier for Fox, and Tris pushed us into jump-space right on cue. You can say that again! On a naval vessel it’s never boring, but on a trader? Sheesh. I spent some time reading up on brokerage and trade. Stop laughing, I need to know this sort of stuff, or at least I will at some point. If I can get the hang of it while on the Helena then I might apply for a mortgage for an A2 or an Empress.Before we jumped there was a little excitement. Miskom hadn’t informed us that Jekki had been, Jekki, the Net Bandit who had just broken out of prison and I told you about, keep up. Miskom hadn’t told us that Jekki had served on the Helena 20 years ago. This was before Miskom owned her. I think she was the Olivia back at then. Miskom served with him! Naturally the navy were covering all bases. Yeah, but it was quick and efficient. The corvette the 25th of July ordered us to stand too and sent over a boarding crew. One Lieutenant Itsurin led the inspection, I hadn't met her. I was a little more nervous than I would have been as Miskom grabbed a case from somewhere and told Noah to stash it in a secret compartment in cabin C. But Itsurin wasn’t looking for smuggled goods, she was after the three on the lamb. Miskom ordered the astrogation re-calculated after our run-in with the IN.Fox did her side of things well - we came out of jump just were Miskom told us to. I set a course for Nût - Ophelia, that’s it! What, no, sorry, I mean the Helena was called the Ophelia back when Jekki was on it. Apparently he was the steward, which is hilarious given what he ended up doing. Anyway, stop interrupting. We came out of jump and I set a course and accelerated into the void. I was about to open a comm. link with Nût - Nût, not Newt, come on, its Egypt highport - when I picked up a message. It was a kind of distress call but not in a normal format. I scanned for the origin and found an old mining platform not far from our jump point. It’s transponder was disabled, which wasn’t a good sign. I set off towards it and looked over at Miskom. He nodded - he might be a bit of a rogue but he's not a monster.As we got closer we were able to take readings from the platform. It was leaking rads at an alarming rate! The distress call was being continually repeated and we felt confident that someone was broadcasting it in real time. We hailed them a couple of times and them moved in to dock. We thought that in our vacc. suits we would have around 45 minutes to play with on the platform. Any longer than that and we would regret it. Miskom took us in while the Fox, Noah and myself suited up. Miskom docked smoothly and I led the way onto the derelict. Rads were high but no worse than we expected. The emergency power was barely able to keep dim flickering lights on. The first room was a sort of control centre. Sitting at a panel a figure was sitting in vacc. suit sans helmet. As we approached they looked up and we saw the blisters on his exposed head. I took a geiger reading and it was grim. It was hard to say but he looked like he was hardly a day over 20. I stepped forward to give him a shot of anti-rad but he waved me back. He knew it was too late for him and he said so. He carried on tapping out his distress call as we spoke.I tried to find out what had happened from Tarim, as he turned out to be called. He was one of four students recruited for a study from Aventine University, New Rome. The study was being conducted by Dr. Papel, head of neuroscience at Aventine, on behalf of Axon Medical. They had been on the platform for 6 1/2 weeks. The research was into psionic amplifiers. Tarim claimed that when three of the subjects - and they rotated - were hooked up they could send a telepathic suggestion which even psi-shields or a psionic blocker couldn’t prevent. Then last night the doctor had sabotaged the platform while they were all in bed. By the time they had woken up and tried to clamber into vacc. suits it was too late. I already knew that Fox and Noah, exploring the rest of the platform, had found three corpses. It was amazing that Tarim had lasted this long. It only took 30 minutes or so for Fox and Noah to walk round the ring that made up the platform. When they had completed their loop and re-entered the control room we joined up and tentatively explored the reactor room. Fox’s history blowing things up came in handy as they were able to identify that the damage was caused by an explosive device, almost immediately.We were getting close the end of the 45 minutes which was the max time we could remain safely. Tarim told us that his room mate had trialed for the study but hadn’t got on - Japsin. He had also given us some CCTV data - the main data chips having been taken by Dr. Papel. I lied to Tarim telling him that his girlfriend Netta had managed to survive as there didn’t seem much point in adding to his anguish. At this point we had to leave and we couldn’t take him as he was dangerously irradiated. He knew he was dying and didn’t make any attempt to come with us. We were all pretty angry. Even Noah commented that he was used to challenging situations but this was too far.We knew the names of the students; along with Tarim Pinoir there was his girlfriend Netta Meecho, Grassin Lethor and Stavrou Condor. The woman running the experiment was called Drasser and they had all arrived on her ship the Dame De Coeur. We sat down to watch the video of the crime. It was a poor picture and we had no sound. We did have a clear enough image of someone in an armoured vacc. suit and carrying a rifle setting a bomb in the reactor room. There were two more armed figures with a woman who were forcing someone we assumed to be Dr. Papel into the airlock. It looked as though the doctor wasn’t the villain we thought he was. He did, however, carry out illegal research on a bunch of kids, so we weren’t very kindly disposed to him. The woman was obviously in charge and I was very interested in finding her current whereabouts…</blockquote>

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