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janestarzApril 24, 2024 / 080-1104
"This explains why it took so many rounds to take these fuckers down." Dendr remarked at Qupar's analysis.
They glanced back down the length of the laboratory. Hollo and Harris were still chained together and Hasta was keeping an eye on them. Parappa and Moira were fidgeting nervously, eyes darting to the humans and the vargr they had found.
Dendr browsed through the computer folders. There were reports on the combat enhancing drugs, which he skimmed over, and then pointed out a folder labelled 'Video'. He waved Hasta over to watch it.
Qupar moved so his body was blocking the screen so Harris, Jan and Hollo couldn't see the video, but Hasta took charge once again.
"You lot should not be watching this;" he pointed to instruct them to move away from the terminal into a corner of the lab; "because we know what flashing lights do to you."
Myles moved the three over to a corner and stood with them. Hollo already looked agitated again, but sheepish as well. Moira gripped her stun stick and stood by, ready to poke at any of them should they try anything.
The videos showed the scientists were testing on lab animals at first. There were rats, mice and monkeys being injected and observed while they were on the drug. Dendr opened a couple of videos at random, and as the dates on the videos progressed, the lab animals were replaced by human test subjects. They were bound and tied to the tables. The videos didn't have any audio, but it was clear the test subjects were unwilling. They struggled in their restraints, their mouths wide open in screams, veins in their necks standing out like cables. A calm scientist would appear from the side and inject them with a syringe in their upper arm. Some of the videos showed haemorrhaging. Some showed painful, excruciating deaths. The scientists in their pristine white coats stood by, calmly taking notes as the horrors before them unfolded.
In one video, a subject broke free of the bonds on the tables. Before he could escape, he was swarmed by several scientists brandishing stun sticks, and incapacitated.
They recognised two of the scientists on the screen. Hollo and Jan were both there during the experiments, taking notes.
Qupar nudged Dendr. "You might want to copy this evidence onto a hard drive of your own."
Dendr stroked his upper lip thoughtfully, and set to work enthusiastically. There were several thumb drives lying around and he selected one and checked the available space on the device before copying the evidence.
Qupar looked at Hasta. "Do you recognise any of the subjects as crew members?"
"No, none of the test subjects were on the crew manifest."
Hasta grabbed his rifle and marched to the waiting group.
"You;" he growled at Hollo; "and you;" he pointed to Jan; "have some explaining to do. Don't give me any of this bullshit about 'it wasn't me, I didn't give the orders, I was only taking notes'. That's not how we roll nowadays. What on earth has been going on here? Where did all those people come from? What have we walked into? I think we need some answers, or someone will be taking a really interesting walk outside into space."
Parappa stepped in before the two could reply. "This is a very unfortunate situation! While scientific inquiries are of course a very noble pursuit, the utilisation of unwilling test subjects is in blatant violation of Intergalactic Codes! Perhaps a stern yet informative message to the head researcher outlining legalities and the ethical considerations would be the most diplomatic course of action. Though I must confess: the sight of these unorthodox contraptions does raise some concerns about adherence to proper safety protocols."
Hasta frowned at Parappa. "Yeah there are quite a lot of safety protocols involved in an airlock, which some of us might forget, if you don't stop talking now."
Jan and Hollo squared their shoulders. "We don't need to tell you anything." Hollo said. "In the pursuit of science, our names will live on long after we have left this mortal universe as cutting edge scientists."
"Certainly defenestration is most likely to induce further silence, not elicit information!" Parappa squeaked. "Perhaps a more nuanced approach? We should establish rapport, yes, um, empathy! I suggest some rudimentary standard human greetings. Perhaps even a joke!"
Hasta eyed Jan up and down. In a flash he swung at the vargr, punching him full in the face.
"This was not the approach I was suggesting!" Parappa protested.
"He's establishing rapport." Moira replied. She wasn't going to get in between Hasta and his chosen method to vent some of his frustration.
"This is most unproductive and in blatant violation of Intergalactic Diplomatic protocols!" Parappa sputtered, stepping around Hasta nervously, unsure of whether he should try and touch the angry man in order to calm him down. "These specimens are far more likely to become less cooperative after such a barbaric display! Let us consult the interrogation manuals!"
Hasta turned to Parappa, fixing him with a flat stare that promised pain. "Do you want me to add you to the airlock?" He turned back to Jan. "Mr. Fist has met mr. Face. Mr. Flechette gun will also meet with mr. Face soon unless you start talking. Although maybe not, because it will be a mess, and there is already quite a lot of mess at this space station that someone might have to tidy up. I might put you in the airlock alive. So start talking, or start dying. The choice is yours. Your memory isn't going to live on because everybody will think you are completely mental and these are crimes against humanity. This is unacceptable. Talk."
Dendr pocketed the thumb drive with the videos and whispered to Qupar. "50 credits the dog is dying first."
"I think the vargr can take more than a punch, so I'm not taking those odds." Qupar replied quietly.
Parappa was whispering urgently to Moira. "This is escalating at an alarming rate. Threats of airlock ejaculation for a minor disagreement? There must be some sort of misunderstanding! It would be prudent to maintain a safe distance from the airlock controls."
The vargrs eyes dilated, and he flexed his muscles before lunging at Hasta with surprising speed. His mouth was open wide, long incisors ready to close around Hasta's neck. Hasta saw him coming though, and side-stepped the vargr deftly. As the vargr landed, Hasta raised his rifle, and fired several rounds into the vargr, hitting him in the centre mass. Blood spurt from the wounds, but as Qupar had predicted, it didn't kill the him. Whatever combat drugs were floating in his system kept Jan alert and ready. He wasn't out of the fight yet.
Harris and Hollo were no longer looking sheepish. Qupar drew his pistol and gestured at them with his other hand. "Don't do anything stupid now," he warned.
Parappa startled when the vargr jumped at Hasta. He whipped out his laser pistol and fired at Jan, and then slapped his hand over his mouth, startled by his own reaction.
"A most regrettable course of action!" he blurted out in apology. "Disabling them should suffice."
But while he was aiming for the arm, his shot hit the vargr square in the chest.
"Whoops." Parappa softly said.
Moira glared at Hollo and Harris. "If either of you freaks move, I'll zap you!" she threatened. The two stood quietly, unmoving. They had met the stun stick before, and were unwilling to risk being zapped by it.
Meanwhile, Myles stepped up to the injured vargr. He had drawn his cutlass and struck at Jan's head from above. The blade found the vargr's neck, biting deep into the soft flesh above the lab coat. Blood sprayed violently from the wound, showering Hasta from head to toe. The vargr crumpled at his feet in a twitching heap with his head almost severed from his torso. His eyes were wide open, tongue lolling out, but he would not get up again.
"How unhygienic!" Parappa called out nervously.
Dendr picked up one of the plastic lab chairs, and threw it close to Hasta so he could easily grab it. "Hit him with the chair!" he called out his recommendation. As Jan had stopped twitching, it was obviously no longer necessary.
"I am really fucked off now. I quite liked this shirt and I don't know if I'll get the bloodstains out." Hasta said sadly, wiping the blood from his eyes and glaring at the last two surviving scientists. They hadn't moved yet, but a change came over them. Their pupils had dilated and their stance had changed, they looked ready to jump into action, even chained together as they were.
Hasta raised the flechette gun at Hollo and fired several rounds into her midriff. Hollo crumpled to the ground, partially dragging Harris with her as she went down.
Moira jumped. Harris had moved! She grabbed the handle of the stun stick tightly, and tried to zap Harris with the stick. She missed him completely, and the stun stick bounced off a lab table next to Harris with a clang.
Harris was slowly advancing on Qupar, dragging the lifeless body of Hollo by the wrist restraint.
Qupar frowned. He tried to talk to these scientists. He tried to patch them up after they had been shot. Even now, restrained and dragging a corpse, this man was still coming for him?
"Fuck that." Qupar fired two rounds in Harris' head, straight between the eyes.
Hasta turned to Myles and looked at the mess on his boarding vacc suit. "Fucking hell, this shirt. I really liked it." He wiped ineffectively at the mess. "Look at me, I'm covered in blood. This is not cool!"
He stepped over to Hollo to kick her body. It was petty and unnecessary, but it made him feel a little better. "Fuck, scientist! What were you doing? You could have just told us what was going on."
Qupar looked over the carnage at Hasta's feet, thinking it probably wasn't the first time Hasta had stood over a few dead bodies, and it probably wasn't the last. He wondered what had happened to a pretty scientist like Hollo that made her do such horrible things, to end up dead on the floor of a lab with chipped teeth.
He took the wrist restraints from their wrists and clipped them onto his vacc suit again. Then he took a 50 credit note from a pocket and handed it quietly to Dendr so the others wouldn't notice. "You called it."
"Are we going to look for the rest of the people and kill them too, or can we leave the ship now?" Moira said impatiently.
"We need to call down to the planet, report what happened, and then leave." Qupar said.
"So, main bridge." Moira nodded.
"There's still two crewmen unaccounted for." Qupar warned. "Just be aware they could jump out at us at any moment."
They moved into the cargo bay, bare metal and bright lights welcoming them. It looked bright after all the darkened rooms, and gave them a sense of safe surroundings. Knowing that the crew had so violently reacted to bright light, they figured the crew would avoid such brightly lit rooms if they could.
They found the cryo berths with "Willow Dawn" painted on the side, as well as empty animal crates that were probably used to transport live specimens to the lab.
A few doors down they found the other air raft bay, with an air raft parked inside. Moira quickly checked its systems, and judged it to be fully functional.
"We might want to take this one down to the planet, instead of the one with the corpse in it. He'll be well on the way to defrosting his extremities." Qupar suggested.
"Bridge first." Hasta said, and led them down. They found another engineering bay, where Parappa patched up Moira's vacc suit with a puncture kit, and then quickly continued on to the bridge.
They came across a dented locked door, with a bloody handprint on it. It was clear someone had tried to get into that room from where they were standing. Hasta knocked impatiently.
"Hello! Everyone in this place has gone fucking nuts. We're here to try and work out what's going on. At some point I'm going to blow this space station up because it is just bad juju. If you're not mental, we're here to save you. If you are mental, I'm probably going to throw you out an airlock because I have lost my sense of humour. Come, don't come, I'm easy either way. I'm having a really bad day and I've just ruined my favourite shirt."
They waited for a minute, but there was no response.
"Last chance!" Hasta called out, and then under his breath: "Fuck you. Let's just go."
At last they entered the brightly lit bridge. There were two chairs at the terminals, one for the pilot and one for the astrogator. Surrounding both seats were instrument panels, lights blinking slowly. Everything was still powered up and operational. A large wall screen showed parts of the ship from the internal cameras and there was a single discarded shoe in the middle of the room.
Dendr fired up the comms panel.
"Did you manage to make contact with the ship?" The panicked voice of Dalglee came over the speakers, as soon as the link was established. "How are the scientists doing? What was the problem with the communications?"
"Evening. This is the adventurers from the totally sci-fi adventuring party." Dendr replied calmly, ignoring the hand gestures from Dalglee to hurry up already.
"What's the situation out there? Have you made contact with the ship?"
"Yeah. No. It's a shitshow man." Dendr forced a smile. "There's all sorts going on. There are no survivors. It was like that when we got here."
Qupar interrupted him. "We found Pent, but she was badly injured and may not survive."
"Yes, what he said." Dendr poked a thumb over his shoulder. "We have...stuff...to bring you. Good news, maybe bad news... you'll know what it is. Em."
He paused awkwardly. "All in all, you might want to burn the place. After we've left."
"What's going on up there?!" Dalglee demanded. "We only sent you up there to see how everyone was and why we lost communications. Are you telling me they're all dead?"
"Did you know what they were doing?" Dendr avoided the question.
"Well they're scientists. They're doing scientific stuff." Dalglee said dismissively. "I don't know what they're doing. I'm the field office. I'm the point of contact."
"I see." Dendr smiled mirthlessly. "So like the generalisation. You weren't aware of the things they were experimenting with? ...on?
"No, not at all. I make sure any instructions from the head office that come into the planet get forwarded on to the ship."
"Okay." Dendr said. "Well, we'll be in touch."
"Please do." Dalglee said. "How did they all die? I need to report this."
"We'll brief you when we get back." Qupar replied before Dendr could make something up.
"Hold please." Dendr pressed the mute button and turned to the rest of the group. "We shouldn't say too much over airwaves that could be tapped into."
"Let Pent do the talking." Qupar suggested. "They'll figure out what's wrong soon enough. We'll collect her from the auxiliary lab and head on out."
Dendr nodded and turned off the mute.
"So yeah, everyone's dead and we're coming back." he said to the screen. "Stand by."
After Dendr had closed the connection, Hasta suggested: "We could blow the whole station up. We don't know if everyone is infected."
"Do we have the capacity to do that?" Dendr asked sceptically.
"I'm sure we can jury-rig it somehow." Hasta's eyes lit up. "I mean, challenge accepted."
"We're not being paid to blow up the ship, Hasta." Moira said pointedly.
"Let them figure it out for themselves." Qupar said. "We'll bring Pent down. They'll have a world of hurt on their hands if she's still violent, and then they can come up here themselves and figure out what they want to do about the whole damned thing."
"Spaceship destruction is a major violation of the Galactic Code." Parappa piped up as they were walking down the hall towards the air raft bay. "The paperwork alone would be a nightmare!"
"And if they screw it up, Dendr can write a nice piece about it." Moira replied.
"What are we getting paid for anyway?" Qupar mused.
"1500 each." Moira said despondently. It didn't seem like enough money now.
"1500 isn't going to cover the cost of the explosives." Qupar pointed out to Hasta.
"It doesn't even cover the cost of Hasta's ammo." Moira replied.
"We should probably ask for more money." Hasta replied. "Or...we could apply the law of flotsam and jetsam. Take some bounty with us."
"They're not getting the wrist restraints back." Qupar said defensively. "And I want to be reimbursed for the medkit. We need new antibiotics."
"They are a corporation." Myles sighed. "They will want to clean this up themselves. And we don't want to get in their way."
"Or they will clean us up as well." Moira agreed.
They arrived at the lockers near the air raft bay to retrieve a spare vacc suit for Pent.
"Can we pilot both air rafts? And can we maybe nick some of these vacc suits to sell on the black market?" Hasta asked. "Way I see it, 1500 credits per person doesn't sound like a lot. Perhaps we can bolster our pay? There's been quite a lot of killing going on for what was basically a 'go up to a science station and see what's happening' kind of mission."
Myles took the six vacc suits out of the lockers.
"I'm not quite comfortable with stealing an air raft." Moira objected.
"Stealing is such a strong word, Moira." Hasta replied.
"If we want repeat custom from this company, I guess we have to do everything above board." Dendr shrugged.
"But would we want to ever work for these guys again?" Qupar asked, folding one of the vacc suits over his arm.
"So if we take one of the air rafts, landed it on the planet away from them and then retrieve it after reporting back, we could then sell it on the black market." Hasta rumbled on ahead, lost in his daydream. "We might get two hundred thousand credits, which we could then use to buy gun turrets for the Penelope. How hard would it be to sell the air raft on the black market?"
"Depends on how we're going to get it out of the system." Moira replied. "There's probably registration numbers."
"Can we get at least 50 thousand for it?"
"Let's look at this from another side." Qupar interjected. "If we report back to Dalglee, we're only going to get 1500 credits. He's not going to reimburse us for the bullets we spent. He's not going to buy our stories that we were attacked. What else do we expect from him?"
"The hole in my vacc suit didn't happen all by itself." Moira retorted. "I was attacked!"
"I have ruined my shirt. It was quite an expensive shirt." Hasta replied. "Do you think he'll buy me a new shirt? No. So either we blackmail him with the data we have, or we rip off his air raft and sell it on the black market, or both."
"I don't think we should try to blackmail a member of a corporation." Myles said.
"We could be a little more subtle. We found some interesting things, what would it be worth?" Qupar suggested. "We don't have to give them the data, they could get that for themselves."
"We could send out a copy of that data for galaxy-wide distribution." Dendr suggested.
Qupar smiled. "I'm sure you could write a scathing article of what happened up here."
"A few videos to go viral." Dendr mused.
"Especially with all the police brutality." Moira smiled at Qupar.
"Oh, I will have to blur out the faces." Dendr smiled. "What you guys did was crazy shit."
"I patched them up afterwards." Qupar raised his hands, protesting his innocence.
"I'm pretty sure I saw you firing a pistol several times." Moira said. "And the chair."
"I don't know why anyone trusted me with a gun." Dendr protested and handed the weapon back to Hasta. "Here, I'll give it back."
"I think the air raft will get us into a shit ton of trouble if we're caught with it." Qupar voiced his doubts. "The vacc suits are at least easily stowed away."
"We could pinch the ship's pinnace instead." Hasta suggested.
Qupar stared at Hasta incredulously.
"We'll just say we need to borrow it to finish the job." Hasta replied cheekily.
"Hasta, I've been on the force." Qupar held up a hand to stop Hasta from talking over him. "I've been one of those pesky cops that dug in deep because some stalwart ruffian thought it would be fun to joyride with the governor's air raft. This is a backwater planet. It doesn't have much. Law enforcement is chomping at the bit to apprehend whoever pulls off this kind of stunt. Then consider there's a big company that doesn't care so much about morals and does all these weird experiments, that is the driving force behind that police force. It's going to be way too much trouble. Way more than it's worth."
"Yeah, that's not going to be an easy thing to steal." Hasta replied despondently.
"How are you going to fence it? Where are you going to fence it on this backwater planet?" Qupar swung his arm wide as if to indicate the numerous criminal enterprises this system was probably lacking. "You're not going to get away with it."
Hasta scowled. "He should just pay us more."
"When we agreed to the contract, we had no idea what had happened." Myles pointed out. "They only knew they were out of contact. They thought it would be an easy job, just go up there and do it. I don't see how we can get any leverage to get more money. The job is already done. They could just tell us to piss off if we ask for more money. There's no way for us to argue."
As they arrived back in the auxiliary lab with the vacc suits, they found the lifeless body of Pent. Her throat had been ripped to shreds and she had bled out in the cubby hole.
Dendr opened his link to the small camera he had set up, and scrolled back through the footage. The only thing on the feed had been a large baboon-like animal passing through the hall half an hour earlier. The wounds could have been made by the monkey, Qupar judged.
"There's a giant monkey killing people on board. What are we still doing here?" Hasta asked.
"We're getting out of here." Myles reminded him.
They went back down to the planet, copied the harddrives and stashed the stolen vacc suits at the Penelope before meeting up at the offices of Dalglee Hash.
"What happened then? Everyone is dead?" Halglee burst out when they entered his office.
"We went up there, we found a whole lot of mess, and we brought some stuff back, but if you want that you're going to have to pay for it." Qupar reported. He didn't feel like he described it properly, and Halglee recovered instantly. The bureaucratic mind must have kicked in right away.
"What sort of stuff?"
"We re-established communications as you asked." Qupar evaded the question.
"You said 'a whole lot of stuff'. That's company property. What did you bring back?"
"We have the ship's logs, the video's;" Dendr counted on his fingers; "The camera footage of everything that has happened and we have a bunch of science data including some of the experimental materials themselves. They will be available for a fee."
"A fee? A fee?"
"We feel there should be some hazard pay retconned into our arrangement because it was not advertised to us as you know, a 12 out of 10 on the danger scale." Dendr replied.
Qupar carefully took Moira by her uninjured shoulder and pushed her to the front so Dalglee could see her injuries and the blood on her vacc suit. Moira moaned in pain regardless of his soft touch.
"...and there was no meal." Moira whimpered.
"No meal?" Dalglee stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Oh my, that is disappointing."
"Look, someone bled on my shirt and I'm not happy about it..." Hasta rumbled.
"That wasn't me." Moira said quickly.
"...and it's not my blood either." Hasta concluded.
"That's most unfortunate. I can't believe what you're telling me here." Dalglee said. "I can certainly pay you some extra money. The effort you put in...above and beyond the call of duty."
"And expenses." Hasta stated. "Bullets aren't cheap."
"Quite. Quite." Dalglee rummaged in a drawer and counted out notes of credits. "Here's the 1500 credits each, and here's 12000 to cover the ah... smooth over the ah... unwarranted expenses that happened during your time there. Most sorry to hear...ah...I just can't believe it."
Dalglee pushed the credits over to them and then asked; "And you say you brought back some things? Can I have that? I will need to file that with my report. I will have to explain why the extra expenses in my report."
"Do you know about the fucked up things they were doing up there?" Hasta asked.
"No? What were they doing?" Dalglee asked. "I was just the point of contact, managing their logistics and personnel coming into the system."
"They were building super soldiers."
"Oh my word." Dalglee fanned himself. "That is shocking."
"They were doing a really bad job." Dendr pointed out.
"I will certainly put that in my report. Thank you for providing me with that... er...I will take the materials now."
Dendr put the hard drives on the desk and carefully placed the vials next to them one at a time.
As they were leaving, Qupar looked over his shoulder for a moment. Dalglee had forgotten to ask for the vacc suits back, and he had no intention of returning his either. The bwap sat in his chair staring blankly at a wall, fiddling with one of the vials Dendr had left on the desk.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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Read the first entry in this campaign.
"This explains why it took so many rounds to take these fuckers down." Dendr remarked at Qupar's analysis.
They glanced back down the length of the laboratory. Hollo and Harris were still chained together and Hasta was keeping an eye on them. Parappa and Moira were fidgeting nervously, eyes darting to the humans and the vargr they had found.
Dendr browsed through the computer folders. There were reports on the combat enhancing drugs, which he skimmed over, and then pointed out a folder labelled 'Video'. He waved Hasta over to watch it.
Qupar moved so his body was blocking the screen so Harris, Jan and Hollo couldn't see the video, but Hasta took charge once again.
"You lot should not be watching this;" he pointed to instruct them to move away from the terminal into a corner of the lab; "because we know what flashing lights do to you."
Myles moved the three over to a corner and stood with them. Hollo already looked agitated again, but sheepish as well. Moira gripped her stun stick and stood by, ready to poke at any of them should they try anything.
The videos showed the scientists were testing on lab animals at first. There were rats, mice and monkeys being injected and observed while they were on the drug. Dendr opened a couple of videos at random, and as the dates on the videos progressed, the lab animals were replaced by human test subjects. They were bound and tied to the tables. The videos didn't have any audio, but it was clear the test subjects were unwilling. They struggled in their restraints, their mouths wide open in screams, veins in their necks standing out like cables. A calm scientist would appear from the side and inject them with a syringe in their upper arm. Some of the videos showed haemorrhaging. Some showed painful, excruciating deaths. The scientists in their pristine white coats stood by, calmly taking notes as the horrors before them unfolded.
In one video, a subject broke free of the bonds on the tables. Before he could escape, he was swarmed by several scientists brandishing stun sticks, and incapacitated.
They recognised two of the scientists on the screen. Hollo and Jan were both there during the experiments, taking notes.
Qupar nudged Dendr. "You might want to copy this evidence onto a hard drive of your own."
Dendr stroked his upper lip thoughtfully, and set to work enthusiastically. There were several thumb drives lying around and he selected one and checked the available space on the device before copying the evidence.
Qupar looked at Hasta. "Do you recognise any of the subjects as crew members?"
"No, none of the test subjects were on the crew manifest."
Hasta grabbed his rifle and marched to the waiting group.
"You;" he growled at Hollo; "and you;" he pointed to Jan; "have some explaining to do. Don't give me any of this bullshit about 'it wasn't me, I didn't give the orders, I was only taking notes'. That's not how we roll nowadays. What on earth has been going on here? Where did all those people come from? What have we walked into? I think we need some answers, or someone will be taking a really interesting walk outside into space."
Parappa stepped in before the two could reply. "This is a very unfortunate situation! While scientific inquiries are of course a very noble pursuit, the utilisation of unwilling test subjects is in blatant violation of Intergalactic Codes! Perhaps a stern yet informative message to the head researcher outlining legalities and the ethical considerations would be the most diplomatic course of action. Though I must confess: the sight of these unorthodox contraptions does raise some concerns about adherence to proper safety protocols."
Hasta frowned at Parappa. "Yeah there are quite a lot of safety protocols involved in an airlock, which some of us might forget, if you don't stop talking now."
Jan and Hollo squared their shoulders. "We don't need to tell you anything." Hollo said. "In the pursuit of science, our names will live on long after we have left this mortal universe as cutting edge scientists."
"Certainly defenestration is most likely to induce further silence, not elicit information!" Parappa squeaked. "Perhaps a more nuanced approach? We should establish rapport, yes, um, empathy! I suggest some rudimentary standard human greetings. Perhaps even a joke!"
Hasta eyed Jan up and down. In a flash he swung at the vargr, punching him full in the face.
"This was not the approach I was suggesting!" Parappa protested.
"He's establishing rapport." Moira replied. She wasn't going to get in between Hasta and his chosen method to vent some of his frustration.
"This is most unproductive and in blatant violation of Intergalactic Diplomatic protocols!" Parappa sputtered, stepping around Hasta nervously, unsure of whether he should try and touch the angry man in order to calm him down. "These specimens are far more likely to become less cooperative after such a barbaric display! Let us consult the interrogation manuals!"
Hasta turned to Parappa, fixing him with a flat stare that promised pain. "Do you want me to add you to the airlock?" He turned back to Jan. "Mr. Fist has met mr. Face. Mr. Flechette gun will also meet with mr. Face soon unless you start talking. Although maybe not, because it will be a mess, and there is already quite a lot of mess at this space station that someone might have to tidy up. I might put you in the airlock alive. So start talking, or start dying. The choice is yours. Your memory isn't going to live on because everybody will think you are completely mental and these are crimes against humanity. This is unacceptable. Talk."
Dendr pocketed the thumb drive with the videos and whispered to Qupar. "50 credits the dog is dying first."
"I think the vargr can take more than a punch, so I'm not taking those odds." Qupar replied quietly.
Parappa was whispering urgently to Moira. "This is escalating at an alarming rate. Threats of airlock ejaculation for a minor disagreement? There must be some sort of misunderstanding! It would be prudent to maintain a safe distance from the airlock controls."
The vargrs eyes dilated, and he flexed his muscles before lunging at Hasta with surprising speed. His mouth was open wide, long incisors ready to close around Hasta's neck. Hasta saw him coming though, and side-stepped the vargr deftly. As the vargr landed, Hasta raised his rifle, and fired several rounds into the vargr, hitting him in the centre mass. Blood spurt from the wounds, but as Qupar had predicted, it didn't kill the him. Whatever combat drugs were floating in his system kept Jan alert and ready. He wasn't out of the fight yet.
Harris and Hollo were no longer looking sheepish. Qupar drew his pistol and gestured at them with his other hand. "Don't do anything stupid now," he warned.
Parappa startled when the vargr jumped at Hasta. He whipped out his laser pistol and fired at Jan, and then slapped his hand over his mouth, startled by his own reaction.
"A most regrettable course of action!" he blurted out in apology. "Disabling them should suffice."
But while he was aiming for the arm, his shot hit the vargr square in the chest.
"Whoops." Parappa softly said.
Moira glared at Hollo and Harris. "If either of you freaks move, I'll zap you!" she threatened. The two stood quietly, unmoving. They had met the stun stick before, and were unwilling to risk being zapped by it.
Meanwhile, Myles stepped up to the injured vargr. He had drawn his cutlass and struck at Jan's head from above. The blade found the vargr's neck, biting deep into the soft flesh above the lab coat. Blood sprayed violently from the wound, showering Hasta from head to toe. The vargr crumpled at his feet in a twitching heap with his head almost severed from his torso. His eyes were wide open, tongue lolling out, but he would not get up again.
"How unhygienic!" Parappa called out nervously.
Dendr picked up one of the plastic lab chairs, and threw it close to Hasta so he could easily grab it. "Hit him with the chair!" he called out his recommendation. As Jan had stopped twitching, it was obviously no longer necessary.
"I am really fucked off now. I quite liked this shirt and I don't know if I'll get the bloodstains out." Hasta said sadly, wiping the blood from his eyes and glaring at the last two surviving scientists. They hadn't moved yet, but a change came over them. Their pupils had dilated and their stance had changed, they looked ready to jump into action, even chained together as they were.
Hasta raised the flechette gun at Hollo and fired several rounds into her midriff. Hollo crumpled to the ground, partially dragging Harris with her as she went down.
Moira jumped. Harris had moved! She grabbed the handle of the stun stick tightly, and tried to zap Harris with the stick. She missed him completely, and the stun stick bounced off a lab table next to Harris with a clang.
Harris was slowly advancing on Qupar, dragging the lifeless body of Hollo by the wrist restraint.
Qupar frowned. He tried to talk to these scientists. He tried to patch them up after they had been shot. Even now, restrained and dragging a corpse, this man was still coming for him?
"Fuck that." Qupar fired two rounds in Harris' head, straight between the eyes.
Hasta turned to Myles and looked at the mess on his boarding vacc suit. "Fucking hell, this shirt. I really liked it." He wiped ineffectively at the mess. "Look at me, I'm covered in blood. This is not cool!"
He stepped over to Hollo to kick her body. It was petty and unnecessary, but it made him feel a little better. "Fuck, scientist! What were you doing? You could have just told us what was going on."
Qupar looked over the carnage at Hasta's feet, thinking it probably wasn't the first time Hasta had stood over a few dead bodies, and it probably wasn't the last. He wondered what had happened to a pretty scientist like Hollo that made her do such horrible things, to end up dead on the floor of a lab with chipped teeth.
He took the wrist restraints from their wrists and clipped them onto his vacc suit again. Then he took a 50 credit note from a pocket and handed it quietly to Dendr so the others wouldn't notice. "You called it."
"Are we going to look for the rest of the people and kill them too, or can we leave the ship now?" Moira said impatiently.
"We need to call down to the planet, report what happened, and then leave." Qupar said.
"So, main bridge." Moira nodded.
"There's still two crewmen unaccounted for." Qupar warned. "Just be aware they could jump out at us at any moment."
They moved into the cargo bay, bare metal and bright lights welcoming them. It looked bright after all the darkened rooms, and gave them a sense of safe surroundings. Knowing that the crew had so violently reacted to bright light, they figured the crew would avoid such brightly lit rooms if they could.
They found the cryo berths with "Willow Dawn" painted on the side, as well as empty animal crates that were probably used to transport live specimens to the lab.
A few doors down they found the other air raft bay, with an air raft parked inside. Moira quickly checked its systems, and judged it to be fully functional.
"We might want to take this one down to the planet, instead of the one with the corpse in it. He'll be well on the way to defrosting his extremities." Qupar suggested.
"Bridge first." Hasta said, and led them down. They found another engineering bay, where Parappa patched up Moira's vacc suit with a puncture kit, and then quickly continued on to the bridge.
They came across a dented locked door, with a bloody handprint on it. It was clear someone had tried to get into that room from where they were standing. Hasta knocked impatiently.
"Hello! Everyone in this place has gone fucking nuts. We're here to try and work out what's going on. At some point I'm going to blow this space station up because it is just bad juju. If you're not mental, we're here to save you. If you are mental, I'm probably going to throw you out an airlock because I have lost my sense of humour. Come, don't come, I'm easy either way. I'm having a really bad day and I've just ruined my favourite shirt."
They waited for a minute, but there was no response.
"Last chance!" Hasta called out, and then under his breath: "Fuck you. Let's just go."
At last they entered the brightly lit bridge. There were two chairs at the terminals, one for the pilot and one for the astrogator. Surrounding both seats were instrument panels, lights blinking slowly. Everything was still powered up and operational. A large wall screen showed parts of the ship from the internal cameras and there was a single discarded shoe in the middle of the room.
Dendr fired up the comms panel.
"Did you manage to make contact with the ship?" The panicked voice of Dalglee came over the speakers, as soon as the link was established. "How are the scientists doing? What was the problem with the communications?"
"Evening. This is the adventurers from the totally sci-fi adventuring party." Dendr replied calmly, ignoring the hand gestures from Dalglee to hurry up already.
"What's the situation out there? Have you made contact with the ship?"
"Yeah. No. It's a shitshow man." Dendr forced a smile. "There's all sorts going on. There are no survivors. It was like that when we got here."
Qupar interrupted him. "We found Pent, but she was badly injured and may not survive."
"Yes, what he said." Dendr poked a thumb over his shoulder. "We have...stuff...to bring you. Good news, maybe bad news... you'll know what it is. Em."
He paused awkwardly. "All in all, you might want to burn the place. After we've left."
"What's going on up there?!" Dalglee demanded. "We only sent you up there to see how everyone was and why we lost communications. Are you telling me they're all dead?"
"Did you know what they were doing?" Dendr avoided the question.
"Well they're scientists. They're doing scientific stuff." Dalglee said dismissively. "I don't know what they're doing. I'm the field office. I'm the point of contact."
"I see." Dendr smiled mirthlessly. "So like the generalisation. You weren't aware of the things they were experimenting with? ...on?
"No, not at all. I make sure any instructions from the head office that come into the planet get forwarded on to the ship."
"Okay." Dendr said. "Well, we'll be in touch."
"Please do." Dalglee said. "How did they all die? I need to report this."
"We'll brief you when we get back." Qupar replied before Dendr could make something up.
"Hold please." Dendr pressed the mute button and turned to the rest of the group. "We shouldn't say too much over airwaves that could be tapped into."
"Let Pent do the talking." Qupar suggested. "They'll figure out what's wrong soon enough. We'll collect her from the auxiliary lab and head on out."
Dendr nodded and turned off the mute.
"So yeah, everyone's dead and we're coming back." he said to the screen. "Stand by."
After Dendr had closed the connection, Hasta suggested: "We could blow the whole station up. We don't know if everyone is infected."
"Do we have the capacity to do that?" Dendr asked sceptically.
"I'm sure we can jury-rig it somehow." Hasta's eyes lit up. "I mean, challenge accepted."
"We're not being paid to blow up the ship, Hasta." Moira said pointedly.
"Let them figure it out for themselves." Qupar said. "We'll bring Pent down. They'll have a world of hurt on their hands if she's still violent, and then they can come up here themselves and figure out what they want to do about the whole damned thing."
"Spaceship destruction is a major violation of the Galactic Code." Parappa piped up as they were walking down the hall towards the air raft bay. "The paperwork alone would be a nightmare!"
"And if they screw it up, Dendr can write a nice piece about it." Moira replied.
"What are we getting paid for anyway?" Qupar mused.
"1500 each." Moira said despondently. It didn't seem like enough money now.
"1500 isn't going to cover the cost of the explosives." Qupar pointed out to Hasta.
"It doesn't even cover the cost of Hasta's ammo." Moira replied.
"We should probably ask for more money." Hasta replied. "Or...we could apply the law of flotsam and jetsam. Take some bounty with us."
"They're not getting the wrist restraints back." Qupar said defensively. "And I want to be reimbursed for the medkit. We need new antibiotics."
"They are a corporation." Myles sighed. "They will want to clean this up themselves. And we don't want to get in their way."
"Or they will clean us up as well." Moira agreed.
They arrived at the lockers near the air raft bay to retrieve a spare vacc suit for Pent.
"Can we pilot both air rafts? And can we maybe nick some of these vacc suits to sell on the black market?" Hasta asked. "Way I see it, 1500 credits per person doesn't sound like a lot. Perhaps we can bolster our pay? There's been quite a lot of killing going on for what was basically a 'go up to a science station and see what's happening' kind of mission."
Myles took the six vacc suits out of the lockers.
"I'm not quite comfortable with stealing an air raft." Moira objected.
"Stealing is such a strong word, Moira." Hasta replied.
"If we want repeat custom from this company, I guess we have to do everything above board." Dendr shrugged.
"But would we want to ever work for these guys again?" Qupar asked, folding one of the vacc suits over his arm.
"So if we take one of the air rafts, landed it on the planet away from them and then retrieve it after reporting back, we could then sell it on the black market." Hasta rumbled on ahead, lost in his daydream. "We might get two hundred thousand credits, which we could then use to buy gun turrets for the Penelope. How hard would it be to sell the air raft on the black market?"
"Depends on how we're going to get it out of the system." Moira replied. "There's probably registration numbers."
"Can we get at least 50 thousand for it?"
"Let's look at this from another side." Qupar interjected. "If we report back to Dalglee, we're only going to get 1500 credits. He's not going to reimburse us for the bullets we spent. He's not going to buy our stories that we were attacked. What else do we expect from him?"
"The hole in my vacc suit didn't happen all by itself." Moira retorted. "I was attacked!"
"I have ruined my shirt. It was quite an expensive shirt." Hasta replied. "Do you think he'll buy me a new shirt? No. So either we blackmail him with the data we have, or we rip off his air raft and sell it on the black market, or both."
"I don't think we should try to blackmail a member of a corporation." Myles said.
"We could be a little more subtle. We found some interesting things, what would it be worth?" Qupar suggested. "We don't have to give them the data, they could get that for themselves."
"We could send out a copy of that data for galaxy-wide distribution." Dendr suggested.
Qupar smiled. "I'm sure you could write a scathing article of what happened up here."
"A few videos to go viral." Dendr mused.
"Especially with all the police brutality." Moira smiled at Qupar.
"Oh, I will have to blur out the faces." Dendr smiled. "What you guys did was crazy shit."
"I patched them up afterwards." Qupar raised his hands, protesting his innocence.
"I'm pretty sure I saw you firing a pistol several times." Moira said. "And the chair."
"I don't know why anyone trusted me with a gun." Dendr protested and handed the weapon back to Hasta. "Here, I'll give it back."
"I think the air raft will get us into a shit ton of trouble if we're caught with it." Qupar voiced his doubts. "The vacc suits are at least easily stowed away."
"We could pinch the ship's pinnace instead." Hasta suggested.
Qupar stared at Hasta incredulously.
"We'll just say we need to borrow it to finish the job." Hasta replied cheekily.
"Hasta, I've been on the force." Qupar held up a hand to stop Hasta from talking over him. "I've been one of those pesky cops that dug in deep because some stalwart ruffian thought it would be fun to joyride with the governor's air raft. This is a backwater planet. It doesn't have much. Law enforcement is chomping at the bit to apprehend whoever pulls off this kind of stunt. Then consider there's a big company that doesn't care so much about morals and does all these weird experiments, that is the driving force behind that police force. It's going to be way too much trouble. Way more than it's worth."
"Yeah, that's not going to be an easy thing to steal." Hasta replied despondently.
"How are you going to fence it? Where are you going to fence it on this backwater planet?" Qupar swung his arm wide as if to indicate the numerous criminal enterprises this system was probably lacking. "You're not going to get away with it."
Hasta scowled. "He should just pay us more."
"When we agreed to the contract, we had no idea what had happened." Myles pointed out. "They only knew they were out of contact. They thought it would be an easy job, just go up there and do it. I don't see how we can get any leverage to get more money. The job is already done. They could just tell us to piss off if we ask for more money. There's no way for us to argue."
As they arrived back in the auxiliary lab with the vacc suits, they found the lifeless body of Pent. Her throat had been ripped to shreds and she had bled out in the cubby hole.
Dendr opened his link to the small camera he had set up, and scrolled back through the footage. The only thing on the feed had been a large baboon-like animal passing through the hall half an hour earlier. The wounds could have been made by the monkey, Qupar judged.
"There's a giant monkey killing people on board. What are we still doing here?" Hasta asked.
"We're getting out of here." Myles reminded him.
They went back down to the planet, copied the harddrives and stashed the stolen vacc suits at the Penelope before meeting up at the offices of Dalglee Hash.
"What happened then? Everyone is dead?" Halglee burst out when they entered his office.
"We went up there, we found a whole lot of mess, and we brought some stuff back, but if you want that you're going to have to pay for it." Qupar reported. He didn't feel like he described it properly, and Halglee recovered instantly. The bureaucratic mind must have kicked in right away.
"What sort of stuff?"
"We re-established communications as you asked." Qupar evaded the question.
"You said 'a whole lot of stuff'. That's company property. What did you bring back?"
"We have the ship's logs, the video's;" Dendr counted on his fingers; "The camera footage of everything that has happened and we have a bunch of science data including some of the experimental materials themselves. They will be available for a fee."
"A fee? A fee?"
"We feel there should be some hazard pay retconned into our arrangement because it was not advertised to us as you know, a 12 out of 10 on the danger scale." Dendr replied.
Qupar carefully took Moira by her uninjured shoulder and pushed her to the front so Dalglee could see her injuries and the blood on her vacc suit. Moira moaned in pain regardless of his soft touch.
"...and there was no meal." Moira whimpered.
"No meal?" Dalglee stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Oh my, that is disappointing."
"Look, someone bled on my shirt and I'm not happy about it..." Hasta rumbled.
"That wasn't me." Moira said quickly.
"...and it's not my blood either." Hasta concluded.
"That's most unfortunate. I can't believe what you're telling me here." Dalglee said. "I can certainly pay you some extra money. The effort you put in...above and beyond the call of duty."
"And expenses." Hasta stated. "Bullets aren't cheap."
"Quite. Quite." Dalglee rummaged in a drawer and counted out notes of credits. "Here's the 1500 credits each, and here's 12000 to cover the ah... smooth over the ah... unwarranted expenses that happened during your time there. Most sorry to hear...ah...I just can't believe it."
Dalglee pushed the credits over to them and then asked; "And you say you brought back some things? Can I have that? I will need to file that with my report. I will have to explain why the extra expenses in my report."
"Do you know about the fucked up things they were doing up there?" Hasta asked.
"No? What were they doing?" Dalglee asked. "I was just the point of contact, managing their logistics and personnel coming into the system."
"They were building super soldiers."
"Oh my word." Dalglee fanned himself. "That is shocking."
"They were doing a really bad job." Dendr pointed out.
"I will certainly put that in my report. Thank you for providing me with that... er...I will take the materials now."
Dendr put the hard drives on the desk and carefully placed the vials next to them one at a time.
As they were leaving, Qupar looked over his shoulder for a moment. Dalglee had forgotten to ask for the vacc suits back, and he had no intention of returning his either. The bwap sat in his chair staring blankly at a wall, fiddling with one of the vials Dendr had left on the desk.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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