IMS Ravenous
24 Oct 2017IndigoWyrd
The Independent Mining Ship Ravenous was a refit Lakon Type-9 Heavy freighter. She was the stuff of legend, a ghost-story told to amuse and terrify young children and drunken miners. One version of the story tells of entire crews succumbing to deep space isolation psychosis and turning on each other. Others tell tale of a vengeful spirit of some long-dead miner killed deep in the ship's refinery who haunts her to this very day. The most fanciful tale is of some unknown alien organism accidentally harvested from what seemed to be an ordinary asteroid that was brought aboard and devoured the crew.Each version of this story ends in a similar manner - the Ravenous is adrift in space, empty of all but the memories of those who had perished aboard her, found by a salvage team, cleaned up, and sold to a new, unsuspecting commander, doomed to repeat the fate of the original Ravenous crew. Like all legends, there are some elements of truth in this tale. There is a refit Lakon Type-9 Heavy that operates as a mining ship, privately held. It was found by a deep space salvage team with no crew on board. It has had several owners, two of which died peaceful deaths as old men. One owned the ship for only a short time before being conscripted into the Federation Navy and sold the ship. One did disappear under unexplained circumstances, and the last owner is believed to have abandoned the ship in deep space as part of an elaborate insurance fraud scam and has never been located.
Very little is known of the original owner of this ship. His name was Commander Tobias Maxwell, was born on Earth, and had originally commissioned this ship as a military supply vessel. It was known to be in operation for some time, before being reported as lost with all hands while on a supply run through uncharted space. The ship was recovered by a deep space salvage team who reported a complete loss of the ship's crew. All the bodies were accounted for, though one escape pod had been launched. It is believed the escape pod malfunctioned, as a number of ships systems were damaged when the ship was found. It is believed the ship suffered a catastrophic failure of the life support systems due to a power surge, which resulted from excessive use of plutonium in the ship's frame shift drive system.
The Ravenous was subsequently sold at private auction, and was retrofit as a mining vessel. No further official records exist beyond this point. But it is around this time that the first stories of the Ravenous being a haunted ship of death began to surface. The ship would resurface many times after this, usually reported by other mining ships operating in deep space. As the stories go, the colossal ship would simply appear out of nowhere, mining away and vanish just as suddenly. Mining ships reporting seeing the Ravenous would often meet with disasters of their own, ranging from systems malfunctions to collisions to pirate attacks. No corroborating evidence has ever been uncovered linking the Ravenous to any of these claims.
The ship is not unknown to pirates either, in fact, many tales are told of encounters with the Ravenous. Among the more fanciful tales, one story tells of a particular crew who held up this particular ship for nearly three hours, taking on several tons of cargo they thought to be gold, palladium, platinum and all manner of precious gems, only to find the cargo containers to be empty, and crews are said to have perished of terrible plagues from coming in contact with these ghostly canisters. Some even link the appearance of the Ravenous to the outbreak of Cerberus Plague, but again, no corroborating evidence has ever been uncovered.
Though again, like so many legends, there is some grain of truth to these tales. At least one confirmed account has been uncovered of a pirate attack upon the Ravenous, when under the command of her fifth owner, Commander Johan Steppens. Johan has recently completed a trade deal with a small colony, taking on a number of supplies in exchange for some of their refined materials. During the return trip Johan and his crew did become severely ill, and it was quickly discovered that the source of their illness was the cargo they had taken on at the colony. While en route to a medical facility the Ravenous was intercepted by a pirate gang, and Commander Steppens did jettison the infected cargo to buy time for his ship and crew to escape. They did not, however, reach their destination before the infection became terminal, and the Ravenous was once again recovered by a deep space salvage team after reports of a ship drifting through several inhabited systems were confirmed.
Like Johan's own crew, the crew of the pirate vessel were also infected by a particular strain of undetermined virus, though it was not until several days after the encounter. It is unknown if there were any fatalities, but records do not show any indication of outbreak following this encounter. It is likely the tales of the Ravenous as a ghostly plague ship were exaggerated and potentially intentionally circulated by later owners to discourage pirates from robbing the ship.
The Ravenous disappeared from the spaceways for quite some time after this, becoming more and more legend than substance. It wouldn't resurface for many years, when a ship matching its description was reported working for an independent mining consortium operating at Barnard's Star. The Ravenous was owned and operated by Commander Eli Fallensworth, who retired after several years operating the ship making regular runs of metals and ores from the Barnard Asteroid belt. Commander Fallensworth passed away in his sleep at the age of 103, and the Ravenous once again went up for auction. No reports of misfortune or unexplained calamity befell Commander Fallensworth or his crew. Though careful scrutiny of his logs did uncover some mentions of "noises most peculiar reported in the refinery by the crew, despite having the refinery rebuilt on two occasions." The logs go on to suggest the noises were likely little more that the result of dust buildup in the refinery's rock crushers, combined with breakdown of lubricants as a result of long-term heavy usage.
The Ravenous would resurface once more operating out of Kim 2-17, as a water supply ship. She was under the command of Commander Eugene Prentice for nearly two years. A report of a minor malfunction in the ship's cargo hatch was reported, and the ship set down on one of the nearby moons so the crew could affect repairs. During the course of repairing the malfunctioning hatch, one crewman suffered the loss of a hand when the cargo hatch suddenly clamped shut while the hydrolic systems were being repaired. After several hours the hatch was fully repaired, and the crew was ready to be underway. No response came from the bridge, and when commander Prentice failed to respond, his crew chief entered the bridge to find Commander Prentice has passed away of what was ruled to be cardiac failure. He was 96 at the time. Unable to get the ship underway a distress call was signaled and the remaining crew were picked up by a Search and Rescue team. The Ravenous sat empty for nearly three months until it was retrieved by a salvage team once more and was subsequently sold at auction.
Following a six month silence, the Ravenous was reported being seen once more, though tales of Ravenous sightings, mishaps and disasters had grown more commonplace. One such tale tells of a group of mercenaries, hired to destroy this phantom plague ship. They were able to locate the ship, and moved to engage, ridding space of this cursed ship once and for all, when an unidentified phenomenon pulled them from hyper space, their ships were rendered powerless, and some indentified vessel appeared, scanning them intensely before departing. The Ravenous disappeared from their sensors by the time they recovered. The veracity of this tale has not been verified, but the account shares many similiarities to sightings of alien ships, since confirmed to be of thargoid origin.
Stories of the Ravenous continue to surface, though none have been verified. Records show the last known sale of this ship to a private owner, working though multiple aliases and agents to obscure their identity. It is unknown to what end the last known buyer acquired this ship, or the reason for such anonymity, but it has been reported sighted mining various asteroids and planetary rings.