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"Hard to tell which way the poor sap was dragged," Hermena mutters while looking both ways, "but Ziggy's specs said the Captain's quarters were to the starboard side, so I vote we look there first. You shorter folks may need to take the lead, I'll cover you and watch our rear in case something tries to jump us."
(Engineering DC 20 to pick the lock.)
Hellih is stymied at first by the lock. But then he realizes he's over-thinking it and with Alzandre's help casually opens the lock with a few small deft manipulations of his tools.
The door opens to reveal the captain's quarters.
The signs of struggle are visible throughout this room. A single bed in the northwest corner of the chamber is torn, with its comforter halfway on the floor. A nearby bed table and desk are in similar disarray, covered with shattered glass and hunks of broken ceramics. A pool of dried blood covers the southern floor, adjacent to the chamber’s sole entry point. It will be difficult to enter without either stepping in the blood or leaping over it.
A four-armed suit of battle harness powered armor lies on the floor. The armor glows with a barely visible force field that projects around the armor at a range of about one foot, and a cable on the floor leads from a starship battery pack to the base of the suit.
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Patterson easily clears the dried blood.
More pragmatic, Hellih steps into the room and begins looking around. He notices a hidden compartment worked into the side rail of the bed. Opening it, he finds a credstick, a white formal or ceremonial headdress somewhat like a veiled keffiyeh, a book titled in kasathan, Between Galaxies, and a holy symbol of Triune.
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Hellih steps aside showing what he found: "It looks like personal things, we can take them with us. Maybe there will be someone to whom we could return it."
He lifts a book scanning through it and adds:
"For now we still know nothing. Let us keep looking around I am sure we will find what has happened."
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Hermena continues to watch the team's retreat, but crouches down to look through the door and see what the rest of the team is investigating. Her eyes go towards the suit of armor with the flickering forcefield around it. "That armor might be worth something to the family as well as the personal items, and if not we could probably find new uses for it with the Society. If the forcefield is detachable we may be able to put it to use right away."
Kai finds no traps.
The armor lies on its side, slumped slightly forward and face down. Steev has to drop to his hands and knees and nearly lay his head on the floor to look through the visor. There's a pool of dried blood and lymph smearing the lower portion of the visor and the face of the kasathan inside looks half burned or torn away.
Kai's storm monitor goes off again, in tandem with the lights dimming to blackness. Faint phantom coruscations play along the force field and die with the return of the ship's light.
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Hermena grips her gun tighter as the lights flicker. "I don't like the look of this. Whatever happened here, it wasn't the result of a stranded crew wasting away or ending their own lives. Something violent happened, and we have no evidence that the killer isn't still here. I agree we should bring the captain's body home. I also think we should bring the body home, but let's sweep the ship first."
She points at the door across from the captain's quarters. "Alzandre, Hellih, if there's nothing else to see in could you peek into the room aft of the captain's quarters before we follow the bloody brick road to the port side? I want to make sure we don't accidentally turn our backs on a hostile."
The door across the hall is unlocked. Inside the room, four beds fill most of these tidy crew quarters. Each bed is neatly made with a prominent item placed atop its center. Above the beds are tightly sealed storage compartments. A single-tier metal shelf curves around the southwestern wall, its surface pristine but entirely empty.
One of the items left atop the bed items is an electronic scale model of the Idari (the roughly cylindrical kasathan worldship that currently orbits the Pact Worlds’ sun) rotating slowly in the air above a smooth stand. Another bed holds a personal datapad, flashing with a low battery warning. A ceremonial Idaran force training baton engraved with the lengthy lineage and titles of its owner, rests atop the third bed. On the fourth bed is an elegantly bound copy of the book Customs of Kasath, a gift traditionally given to a kasatha who has just completed the Tempering, a coming-of-age ritual. The nameplate inside identifies the copy as belonging to Yotto, one of the kasatha crew members. Nestled inside the cover is a least photon crystal.
Meanwhile back in the captains quarters, the debate goes on....
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Kai moves to inspect the rooms, using one of his extra power supplies to power up the crewmember's datapad and see what message might have been left behind.
"You know, if we could get power to the ship, we might be able to access the system and see what happened here. I don't know if we have that kind of time, though. Are we headed for the bridge? If so, it's that way."
Kai powers up the datapad and starts to poke into it. There is no security. The system is open, but the text is all kasathan.
The datapad is a diary. The last four entries are below.
RECORD 1
I am worried about Yotto. She is furious about what happened at the Bulwark and seems to be withdrawing more and more—she
didn’t even attend this morning’s spar. Instead, I battled against Blue Sky-101, who is a skilled opponent but lacks the same vitality
and understanding of honor. I thought Yotto would at least work some of her anger out by taking baton to bot. Perhaps it is her
youth getting the better of her. I will give her a few days to restore her balance.
RECORD 2
The loss of Yotto is unbearable, and to make matters worse, the damage to the ship was more extensive than we thought. The
captain sent out a distress beacon in the Drift, but it is too dangerous to stay in this minefield, so we have returned to the Material
Plane. When we return to the Idari, I hope the adata will accept Yotto’s body and grant me dispensation to query her soul. I’d like
to speak with her one last time—and ask her why she was in the cargo hold when we were hit. For now, I have shrouded her body
and placed it in the sparring chamber.
RECORD 3
At first, I thought it was a dream—a nightmare. I walked into the sparring room and there was Yotto, but… changed. She swung at
me from across the room, but I felt her hand rip through me as though I were made of paper. I tried to subdue her with the sparring
equipment, but my blows simply passed through her. It took all of us armed with force batons to eventually lure her into the
captain’s quarters, where the captain sacrificed herself to trap Yotto—or whatever she has become—within her suit’s force field. Kela
has rigged one of the ship’s batteries to amplify the field and keep the creature contained, but we may soon be faced with fighting
this thing for our lives.
FINAL RECORD
As our forebears faced the dimming of Kasath’s sun, so do we know that our ship’s power reserves near their end. Traska has
encrypted our ship’s log, and tonight we will gather in the mess to partake of our final meal. We have placed our sacred items atop
our beds, as tradition requires. I hope those items, as well as something of the captain, our pilot, and even Blue Sky-101, find a safe
return to the Idari should we not. Eloritu guide us.
– Teliu Davead Mord of Clan Ferrous, House Elwood, truth-keeper of the Ferrous Stone
The vesk takes the ship model, book, and engraved baton from the beds.
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Hellih looks through things when Kai is powering the datapad. Android takes it from him and starts reading the records in Common.
After reading the part
sacrificed herself to trap Yotto—or whatever she has become—within her suit’s force field. Kela
has rigged one of the ship’s batteries to amplify the field and keep the creature contained...
Hellih eyes goes big and he yells:
"Captain armor, is the forcefield operational? If so attach a new battery to it, so that the monster does not attack us!"
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"What monster? What does this say? Not everyone reads kasathan, you know!"
It was only then that Kai's brain connected Hellih's translation to the shouted warning.
"I knew it! That's why you don't take dead bodies aboard your ship when you're out in the middle of nowhere without scanning them first! didn't I say it?"
Kai was practically hyperventilating at this point. After all, he was a data slicer - and a damn good one - not a combat soldier. And it sounded like they were in need of a few combat soldiers.
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Standing in eyesight from the powered armor, continuous reading.
After that he recaps:
I tried to subdue her with the sparring equipment, but my blows simply passed through her
It took all of us armed with force batons to eventually lure her into the
captain’s quarters, where the captain sacrificed herself to trap Yotto—or whatever she has become—within her suit’s force field.
"So it seems that physical damage do it no harm, but it seems to be vulnerable or maybe simply affected by force fields. Can you review the weapon that you have? I have a laser rifle and a club."
Hellih looks around after he stopped reading.
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"Both of my machine guns use physical projectiles, unfortunately, and my starknife is strictly useful against the corporeal as well," Hermena sighs. "That being said, Kai may be onto something. I doubt those force batons mentioned in the report just fell out of the ship. Let's see if we can find them in the sparring room, I think that's where the blood trail leads anyway."
Patterson leads the way along the blood trail to the door of the customizable room where the trail disappears under the door.
As he crosses the main cabin the laser turret in the ceiling lurches into life and tracks him across the room; the red eye between the twin laser barrels is locked on him, but it does not fire.
This door is not locked. Patterson punches buttons on the keypad to open it.
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 over the simple sparring mat that covers much of the center floor. A few more shuriken and a baton lie on the bare floor around the mat. An alcove along the inboard bulkhead 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. When the door opens, the robot speaks in grainy, inflectionless kasathan.
The robot does not move. It merely repeats, "Haluatko pelata peliä?"