A crime scene
24 Jun 2022Claude Lecardunoie
A crime scene, that what it was indeed. I am not an expert, but it looked like the remaining of a planetary settlement outpost. I landed on Pleiades Sector IH-V c2-16 D 2 only a few minutes ago. All I had were this planet name and coordinates: -17.49, 124.265. And that wasn't much. Look, I am no engineer or scientist, but I can't stop wondering how come we have advanced navigation systems able to point a star system a hundred light years away and yet having to struggle with a basic compass and a close eye on increasing or deacrasing latitude and longtitude angles displayed on the ship's HUD to spot a planetary site.
I was in a pretty bad mood already, because I had to wait longer than expected my VRS bay and my Scarabée at Blackmount Orbital. I generally don't mind waiting: I sit in a café or I find a decent restaurant and read a good book. But spatioports in the Pleiades then couldn't compete with what you could find in the Bubble: only colonial low quality collective catering, serving meals in polystyrene plates and bad coffee in disposable cups.
The time spent to spot these damned coordinates made me close to give up. It took me 15 minutes to reach my targeted latitude and another 20 minutes to get to the longitude while staying aligned on the latitude. And worse: once I got there I couldn't find a proper site to land my vessel as the terrain there was very difficult.
I finally touched ground some 5km away from the target position and managed to deploy my Scarabée. My state of mind quickly changed. It was not the first time I had to explore a planet with a VRS, but I couldn't tell why: this landing site was spooky. Even the air conditioned inside of my VRS felt thicker. As if all of this was not scary enough, I landed on the dark side of the planet.
A scary landing site
Despite the darkness, I saw somekind of structure away and the closer I got, the more I could see that a tragedy happened there. I turned on the lights, I was close enough for them to reach what was left of a planetary base. Even with the lights on, I had trouble manoeuvering my buggy as my hands were sweaty and shaking. I was actually really panicing: what I if it were Thargoids? The Pleiades was one of their hunting ground... I was there, on my own and completely unprepared for such encounter...
Out of the dark, what was left of the settlement
I suddenly heard a craaak. My Scarabée just rolled on something. Instead of scaring me, that sound helped me to calm down and got me focused on what I had to do. The crak noise actually came from a canister I crushed while rolling over it. I deployed my cargo scoop to pick it up. Just regular goods that these poor fellows brought with them. I looked around, no survivors, but no corpses either. Attack and abduction I thought, but from who? I collected two other canisters, one of them being Federal data. I tried to upload them, but they were partially corrupted. All I could decypher were only regular logs from a settler convoy: weather reports, food and water stocks inventory etc. They probably left some Federal system to settle in the Pleiades with the dream of starting a new life.
That raised one question: main powers weren't present in the Pleiades then or only through main corporations susbsidiaries: any station needs them for basic services like energy distribution, people and good transportation, civil engineering etc. But they didn't own any system nor station. So was it a Federal initiative to set foot there? An initiative aborted by the other Galaxy powers? Thargoids? No, I hadn't meet any then, but it didn't look like them: their weapon leave some distinctive chemical evidence, but there weren't any. It could be any of the usual suspects then: Empire, Alliance, a local faction, or, and I didn't like that since I was in good term with them: Sirius Corporation?
I finally detected the communication data system. Although very deteriorated I picked up some outgoing messages. The last one was rather explicit:
"... can't hold an... longer... eed help. Facing heav... pirate attack sector 26... Powerplant destroyed, last ca... ission 23810-01 signing o...".
Seeking evidences
I was done there. I drove back to my ship, still shaken by what I discovered. I quickly took off to Kipling Orbital. I went to the local Federal Consulate. Somehow, it was a relief to report them that the annilation of one of their settling mission was the work of one of many pirate crews wandering in the Pleiades and that the Federation couldn't use it as an evidence against the other main powers.
What now? Flying back to the Bubble because I needed to earn credits. In my personal fleet, there already were a merchant ship, a heavy fighter, an exploration ship. But I wanted to acquire, at least, a bounty hunting craft and a passenger liner. If I wanted enroll with Sirius, I had to be able to offer as many services as possible.