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Under a barrage of fire, Nyizin totally stalls out and isn't able to make any progress down the track, while the other racers either gain on him or pass him entirely.
Ratrod takes a shot, but still manages to keep control enough to avoid Lemgem's shots on him and advances down the track.
Orsis, who fired on Nyizin to help save some of his ego, does make some forward progress, but is distracted enough that he doesn't get his full complement of speed.
Lemgem, whose shots just miss Ratrod's vehicle, falters on her driving and continues to fall behind.
Velocity fires two of the shots into Nyizin's side, then speeds along to gain on the field.
The Labon-timizer, with Al at the helm, cruises ahead and into the lead!!!
"LABON-TIMIZER WINS!!! LABON-TIMIZER WINS!!!" The announcers are screaming their heads off as the Starfinder-built racer crosses the finish line with a wide gap between her and her nearest competitor. Just as you all are ready to leap from your seats in the control booth, you hear a deep, joyful laughter from behind you.
"Gra-HAH! Well I'll be blasted," Radaszam says with an expression that belies mild exasperation as well as vague amusement, "You managed to pull it together."
Laboni stumbles up and out of her seat to present herself to the Acquisitives leader, "Sir! I'm sorry if I caused trouble. Although, I guess I wasn't exactly wrong to tell Ratrod I could beat him, right? Hack, I could probably beat him again if I stuck around!"
"And you'll get that chance, Laboni," the vesk assures her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "While you all have been hard at work winning this race, I've been making contacts with the Salvage Union that could prove quite useful someday. They agreed to work with us, provided you stay on as a regular competitor in the races."
A massive grin spreads across Laboni's face as the news hits her. "Great! I won't fail you, sir. I'll do the Society proud!"
She turns to all of you next, and wraps up each of you in a massive hug. "I couldn't've done it without you all. Thanks a ton! I promise I'll take good care of the Labon-timizer, but feel free to come around and help out on the pitcrew anytime you want!"
A short while later, the other racers come around to congratulate Laboni and her crew, and a rather singed looking Ratrod steps toward her. "I gotta admit, you held your own out there. Good job, all of you."
Laboni apologizes to Ratrod for her boasting and trash talk. The ysoki’s pride still hurts, but the gesture compels the Salvage Union to offer Laboni some extra payment in the form of collected gear, on top of the race’s prize money.
In turn, Laboni presents you all with a set of graphite carbon skin armor and 400 credits from the race’s prize pool.
With your mission for Radaszam and the Acquisitives complete, you direct your attention back to the information Guidance provided you on the faction leaders you are meant to meet with. You find that you only have one leader left to meet--Fitch, the leader of the Wayfinders!
The Wayfinders’ transitory nature precludes them from having a single stationary headquarters on Absalom Station. Instead, the Wayfinders operate out of the Master of Stars, an enormous starship that is part of the Armada orbiting Absalom Station. The Master of Stars is currently undergoing extensive repairs, obsessively overseen by the Wayfinders’ leader Fitch. A Society shuttle takes you out to the orbiting ship.
The station’s Armada can be seen from the shuttle’s view screen as it takes off, gleaming figures standing out against the emptiness of space. The Master of Stars immediately stands out from the rest, as layers and layers of scaffolding obscure its hull. Tiny lights flicker among the metal beams as distant figures weld plates and heat shields to the ship’s exterior. The shuttle smoothly glides closer until it reaches the starship’s docking bay, slipping through the magic field that keeps the hold pressurized with breathable atmosphere. As the shuttle doors open, a small drone flies in and pops up a holoscreen, displaying a harried-looking ratfolk.
“Finally, fresh meat!” the ysoki exclaims over the screen, sounding pleased. “Name’s Fitch—pleasantries over, time to get to work. I had some trouble earlier with the lights flickering on the ship, and now both the lights and computers have suddenly gone out on E-Deck. No idea what’s causing it, but you work this job long enough and—” Fitch’s attention flicks to something offscreen, and she shouts “Kirkath! The welding torch is not a toy! You wanna go in the toddler’s pen with the other kids?” She snorts dismissively before continuing, “Sorry, some of these little ones would cut off their own heads if I let them. Anyway, it could be some lunkhead screwed up the wiring, but that’s a pretty big system failure for a simple electrical short. I’d prefer to send in some people with combat training to scout it out, just in case someone or something is sabotaging the ship. If it’s nothing, great, get the power back on if you can. If there’s something suspicious, use your comm units to report in to me. I’ll give you the access codes, so—Selicha! If you touch that panel I will staple you to the hull!”
The screen on the drone cuts out, then flashes to display the ship’s schematics and the passwords for the computers on E-Deck. Plugging your comm units into a port on the side of the drone allows you to download the schematics and passwords for your use during the mission, as well as Fitch's comm code so you can continue communicating with her.
You are able to use the working lifts and maintenance tunnels to reach E-Deck. The doors on E-Deck are closed and do not automatically open without power, but since the magnetic seals on the doors are also disabled due to the power loss, you manage to force your way through into what appears to be a storage room.
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Xeeter is torn when he meets the busy Fitch. Should he go on the mission, or help the harried leader out with a spot of baby sitting? He's not exactly the engineer type. Still, a good skittermander does not abandon his team. "Okay, we'll help!"
When they ride up in the darkness, he is elated to actually do something. He activates the flashlight in his comm unit. "Okay, team... Let's go in!"
Ears and eyes tuned for trouble, he looks around for the signs of what's amiss.
Scattered barrels and boxes line the lowered floor of this storage chamber. A thick bulkhead to the port side leads farther onto the deck, while a similar bulkhead to the aft connects to an arterial hallway that runs the length of the deck.
As Xeeter points his flashlight toward the interface, he confirms that the system is completely dormant. There appears to be no power whatsoever flowing to the system, though you suspect that someone with engineering skills could at least diagnose the reason for this, if not correct it themselves.
After several minutes of searching, you are unsure of what caused the power outage, but you suddenly hear a noise from behind some crates in the northeast corner of the room.
Zapp and Guli pop open an electrical panel and find some of the wires are badly frayed. They patch up with the wires with their engineering tools, then flip the switch off, then on again.
The lights are just beginning to blink on as Korl looms over the edge of the crate where the noise was heard. He doesn't see them at first, but he quickly hears the frightened shrieks of two human children who are huddled behind the crate.
"Don't hurt us," one of them cries.
"Don't tell our dad," the other shouts.
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Korl, as startled as the children, ignore them momentarily and turns his head back to the party Oh...uh. I guess there was something here after all. They appear to be small humans.
Having composed himself slightly, he looks down Why would I hurt you, smallish human? Also, I don't know your father to tell him...whatever it is I shouldn't tell him?
With the friendly attitudes displayed by Korl and Diralynn, both children seem to calm down from their previous hysterics, and come out from their hiding place behind the crates.
"Um...okay. I guess we can go back, but Daddy said he would be busy, so we'd have to go back to the kid's area," the young girl says meekly.
"I don't wanna go there, Kieu Lan" her younger brother pouts, "That place is for babies."
"Be quiet, Kieu Si. Daddy said we have to stay there while he works on the ship."
"But I wanna stay here and play with...um...nevermind." Kieu Si suddenly hushes up and looks down at his feet as Kieu Lan nudges him in the ribs and shushes him.
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"Play with whom?" Xeeter inquires, gently. "Is there someone else here?"
"I know that I don't like playing much with the babies either, because skitter whelps have tummy tubes that attach to larger animals. A whelp's secondary mouth allows it to attach itself to large prey and feed at its leisure. Thanks to a numbing mucus secreted by this mouth, less intelligent animals rarely even notice a whelp's samplings, but I always did, and had to forcibly detach my nieces and nephews." Then he pauses. "But human babies don't do that... do they?"
"Maybe you could go back to the kids area, but help the adults instead of playing with the babies. You two seem pretty clever. Maybe you could build some toys, or help hand out snacks, or do other things to help. Or if you would like, I could play with you later. I know lots of games. Have you ever learned Skimmer?" He pulls out his cards, and shuffles them quickly between all of his hands, moving in a blur. "It's a card game that I dealt at the Vestrani gaming complex on the Burning Archipelago. People bet thousands of credits on it, winning or losing fortunes overnight. You can learn to improve your odds of making money -- though. It's pretty easy if you know how to count numbers, read people or lie about the contents of your hand. I can show you all my tips, but I'd need a place to meet you after we're done checking this place out. The kid's area would be a good place to find you."
Skeeter gives the kids his comm code in case they want to learn this important life skill.
"Or you could wait here with Al," Skeeter adds as Al speaks. "Then we could all go back and learn Skimmer together! Is there anything you can tell us about the rest of the rooms? I bet you've explored them already!"
Kieu Si stares up at Al, "You're weird! Everybody knows the Pathfinders don't exist anymore. Just the STARFINDERS!" He raises a fist up into the air in a dramatic pose, then quickly shifts attention to the drone doggy that has wandered up beside him.
"Our Daddy says gambling is bad for you if you like eating," Kieu Lan replies, her gaze not quite meeting Xeeter's. "But we don't have to go back yet cause, well...we're here...on a mission! Right Kieu Li?"
"I thought you said we were here to play with--OW! Why'd you do that?!" Kieu Si picks up and rubs at the foot his sister had just stamped on as he began to reply.
"No! We're on a MISSION! We haven't been down here very long so we DON'T KNOW about this place."
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"I'll tell you what. Seems as if you junior Starfinders are on a classified mission, but you're in a little over your heads. We can supplement your team. Don't worry, you'd still call the shots." Zapp turns back to wink at the team, as they know who'll be in charge.
"How great would it be to have us backing you up? There's one little wrinkle, though. We can't work effectively while in the dark about our mission. So I'll need you to tell us what you're up to. And it's still classified, so we won't tell anyone else."
Both kids beam as Zapp comes down to their level and offers the team's assistance with their "mission."
"Okay, but you can't tell anybody, especially not Daddy," Kieu Lan says, bouncing on her feet in excitement. "Kieu Si and I came down here to play, and we found these really weird tubes with this gooey liquid in it, but one of them was broken. We saw that the liquid was dripping across the floor, so we followed it, and found our new pet! We were down here playing hide-and-seek with him when the power went out. We couldn't open the doors after that, and we've been stuck down here since then."
"He's all sorts of things," Kieu Si responds excitedly. "He's really really good at hide and find!"
Kieu Lan nods her agreement and points toward the westward doors, "He's through there somewhere. Probably hiding again. Betcha can't find him before we doooo!" She sings tunelessly and giggles as she and Kieu Si begin running off toward the port doors, which now slide open smoothly when they activate the terminal.
Following after the children, you find an area consisting of two adjoining chambers. Four large containment capsules fill the fore room, three of which hold stasis-locked objects, including a tablet, a strange curved sword, and an odd spiral of bioluminescent coral. A crack leaks fluid from the fourth capsule, which displays a foot-wide breach near the bottom. The aft room contains several desks, each hosting a deactivated computer terminal.
Just as Diralynn is voicing her question, wondering what the group should actually be looking for, she notices something...odd. The room to the aft seems strangely warm, and she even finds the heat to be making it somewhat steamy in this chamber, almost like a fog cloud had descended on the area. Yet through the fog, she notices a trail of the same fluid that you see leaking from the broken containment capsule dripping from one of the desks. She follows the drip of fluid up onto the desk, where a small garbage bin is sitting with several cables pulled from the desk's computer station and shoved into the top of the bin.
Xeeter's close proximity to the ground allows him to more effectively trace the trail of liquid from the broken stasis chamber...straight toward the desk where Diralynn is standing.
Meanwhile, Zapp continues berating Kif about the unsanitary conditions of E-Deck, noting especially how, in the Pact Worlds, people don't usually put their garbage cans on top of their desks! Disgusting!
Just as Zapp is pointing this out, Diralynn reaches up to remove the lid from atop the garbage bin, when suddenly, it gives a startled yelp!
With a flurry of motion, the garbage bin morphs into a small creature with a wide toothy mouth and strange mottled skin. In its hand, it grasps a bundle of cables from the computer systems, which it occasionally brings to its mouth and sucks on. Each time it brings the cables to its mouth, the lights momentarily flicker. The creature makes series of strange, unintelligible sounds at Diralynn, a disapproving expression on its face. Xeeter overhears the creature's noise, but for some reason, his spell doesn't translate it into anything he can understand.
Diralynn and Zapp quickly deduce that the creature is likely gaining some form of sustenance from the cables it is sucking on, and is apparently consuming raw energy, based on how the lights keep dimming.
With Xeeter's friendly demeanor and similar size, the creature allows the skittermander to lay one of his six hands on its outstretched hand. The spell goes off easily, its strange noises are magically translated into Common.
"Don't hurt me. I'm just hungry. And sleepy. Where'd my friends go?"