It takes about a half hour to find the signal, which turns out out to be a small message buoy lodged in an asteroid. While it's being decoded, you have time to harvest the ore from a couple of those same asteroids, which should fetch a pretty penny back on Absalom Station. Once decoded the message reads:
"ATTN: This message is confidential; if you are not the intended recipient, _ABSALOM STATION>>EXO-GUARDIANS_, please delete this message immediately.
MESSAGE: This is Remahd, captain of the Struggle’s Scholar. Most of my crew and I escaped Sangoro’s Bulwark with our lives, but upon entering the Drift, we collided with some extraplanar material. Soon after, we lost a crew member, as well as control of our primary engine. We have managed to patch our Drift functionality enough to drop out of this dangerous field and into normal space at the enclosed coordinates. Please send assistance as soon as is feasible—without our engine, our power supply is diminishing rapidly. In the event you are unable to reach us in time, I have heavily encrypted vital information meant only for the current head of the Exo-Guardians and locked it in a hard drive on the ship’s bridge."
You estimate it'll take about three hours Drift travel to arrive at the coordinates indicated.
Three hours later you drop out of Drift to see a derelict ship floating ahead of you!
A heavily damaged kasathan transport ship floats in empty space, dark but for a slowly flashing orange light at its aft. Just a few miles away from the ship, a massive storm dwarfs the vessel, blue and gray etheric clouds warping the field of stars behind the ship and flashing internally with jagged streaks of light. For all its violence, the vast storm is silent, and it looms larger with each passing second.
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Piggy frowns at the monitors. "If that storm is like the dust storms back home, we don't want to get caught up in it. Let's get in, get the info and the remains, then get out. " After a moment's thought, he adds, " Though, I might be able to get her back up and running again. Let me go see if we have any spare engine parts! "
He races off to the hold to begin the search.
B4B2 gets the ship connected without any issues. There's a hiss as the airlock connects and the outer door of the Kasathan ship opens. The airlock door to the south is open, which the one to the north is closed. This entire chamber is one large airlock, with access doors to the north and south. Loose netting floats in the gravity-free chamber. A warning light above the interior door flashes every few seconds, periodically bathing the room in a dim orange glow. A small panel next to the door flashes orange in time with the warning light.
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Piggy smiles as they approach. "C'mon, Porkers! " With that, he leaps onto his drone's pink barreled back and heads out the airlock. He whispers to his pig. "Hold your breath, buddy. No air out here. "
Porkers leaps towards the panel, taking advantage of the lack of gravity. Piggy assists with using the panel.
Between Reynold and P-K, the switch is discovered and air and gravity slowly fill the room as the southern airlock door closes and the northern one opens! A gruesome trail of blood runs across the floor of the ten-foot wide hallway that runs horizontally across the ship; at each end of this hall are metal access doors leading to the north and south. A shorter hall leads to a door to the north, with two doors halfway up that hall exiting to the east and west. Finally, a large airlock seal covers the center of the southern wall here. A double-barreled weapon turret limply hangs from the ceiling, just west of the southern airlock door.
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Reynold's typical sly smirk vanishes as he looks over the gory trail. He draws his static arc pistol and flips it into kill mode. "What in the blazes happened here? This doesn't look like just a system failure."
Reynold tries to determine where the blood trail originated. "We should check where this came from and try to find out what happened. I don't like this."
B4B2 manages to stabilize herself on top of Porkers, and disables the turret, while Reynard notes that symmetry dictates there might be another turret on the other side, but seated in its ceiling alcove. Without it being deployed, it would be very difficult to disable.
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Reynold eyes the ceiling where the second turret should be. "Stay paranoid, friends. That turret has a buddy who's being shy. Do you best to avoid getting shot."
He walks over to the door where the blood trail begins, pistol out. "We don't have much time. Stay with me, I'm going in." He reaches out to the keypad to open the door.
The door opens as Reynold approaches. Inside the room is dimly lit with emergency lights providing some illumination.
A single door opens into this open space. Just inside the doorway, the entry floor is caked with blood, and several batons and shuriken are scattered throughout the room. A simple sparring mat covers much of the center floor. An alcove along the eastern edge houses a weapon rack filled several kinds of batons and a dozen fine shuriken. On the opposite wall is a pad of self-healing foam with colorful abstract targets painted on it. A four-armed metal robot stands in the southwestern corner of the chamber.
The robot comes to life as the door opens and exclaims loudly in Kasathan.
Running lights come on as the robot slumps, leading to a compartment on its back about the size of a brick.
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Piggy practically squeaks in fear. " Turret? Oh, goodness. Let's hope these Starfinders were cheap and bought some lackluster targeting software. " On alert, nonetheless, he draws out his laser rifle and pats Porker's head. "Get ready for action, Bud. "
He guides Porkers to follow the group and peers in the door.
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Da'at finally snaps out of his reverie. "Damn thing was talking about being ready to duel, before it warned everyone that the power was too low for it to function to "specifications" he says, toggling the safety off his newfound toy and turning on his society subdermal graft and drawing his hammer. Stepping in the room, he sweeps it with his outstretched hand, curtly ordering: "ইউনিট, কারখানা বৈশিষ্ট্যাবলী ফিরে। ইউনিট অবস্থা।"
The unit does not respond. The robot stays unmoving, but the running lights still illuminate a panel on its back. Perhaps this is its battery compartment?
Reynold, P-K and Piggy notice a holoprojector in the ceiling with a carbonedge shuriken lodged in it. With a little re-wiring, Piggy is able to bring the projector back to life and it projects what looks like a record of the last battle in the room. It's grainy, but it looks like a Kasathan crew member is doing battle with another Kasathan, this one floating slightly off the ground with glowing eyes. The battle ends when the crew member (bleeding from multiple wounds that seem to have been ripped out of him) sends a shuriken right into the head of the floater, but it passes right through its eye and imbeds in the projector, ending the recording!
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Color drains from Reynold's face. "It...looks like this ship might be haunted. These kasathas were murdered by a ghost of one of their own. I bet it's at the other end of this blood trail...."
He trains his finger on the trigger of his static arc pistol. Will this even work against it? That throwing star went right through it. He makes his way over to the robot and tries to remove the battery from the panel on its back. "Let's get to the bridge, get the data, and get out of here. No way I want to poke around a literal ghost ship."
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Piggy shivers as he watches the video. " This may be more interesting than it seemed. Space ghosts... I thought those were only in the movies. "
He takes one more look around the room for anything useful, then points Porkers towards the door. "I vote we investigate the other small room before following the blood trail. If it contains more information, that could help us understand what happened here. "
He rubs Porker's metallic neck nervously. Hopefully your laser proves better than that shurikan, pal.
Looking around the room, Piggy spots several things in the weapon racks. The weapon rack in this chamber contains an Idaran force training baton (see sidebar), 10 carbonedge shuriken, 8 tactical batons, 4 cestus battlegloves, and 2 serums of enhancement (commando).
IDARAN FORCE TRAINING BATON
An Idaran force training baton is a 2nd-level uncategorized basic melee weapon that deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage. The damage from this weapon counts as a force effect when wielded by a character with at least 12 Strength. Note, this does not mean the weapon deals force damage, only that it counts as a force effect for overcoming certain defenses such as incorporeal. It has the operative and powered
(capacity 20, usage 1) special properties, it is light bulk, and it costs 400 credits.
Across the hall, the door opens as P-K approaches. The northern wall of this chamber is so forcibly compacted to the south that the chamber extends only about ten feet from the door. Several person-sized crates are fused into the distorted hull, obviously melted by extreme heat. Space is visible from between several gaps in the northern wall, accented by the occasional shimmer of a force field. Piggy can verify this force field is where the third power source was diverted to.
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Piggy walks over to the weapons racks and starts pulling the items off. Turning to Porkers, he opens a latch on the side of the pink drone and lifts. Then, he begins shoving weapons inside the drone's belly and muttering to himself as he goes. "Loot, loot, I love loot. "
When he gets to the force baton, he pauses and holds it up. "Ooh, shiny! Xenal, want this? You can boop the ghost with It! Da'at might trade you his mega-cannon for it, too! Your call. " He tosses the baton over then returns to pilfering the rack.
Looking around Pangea, he remarks. "Whoa! Either something has gone terribly wrong inside the ship... or, more likely, the hull took a huge blast from outside! I'm surprised we didn't see the wreckage on our approach! "
If the room is no longer hot, he searches the room and the boxes for usable items.
P-K notices something rather odd near the force field - a pattern of android fluid and alien blood splatter! Following the trail, P-K finds something even more macabre in one of the cargo containers - the right arm and leg of an android! The limbs look as if they were torn off with violent force by something with claws - definitely not the thing they saw in the holorecord!