Sargasso of Souls – Session 7
[This session write-up was done by Colin from Razor's perspective]
From the time I left Earth I never stopped trying to find Denise … but I could find no trace of whether she was alive or dead … her trail reached a dead end when she had left Earth orbit allegedly on the Hauler Engineering Practice, but even that was impossible to verify ..
Then out of the blue, two days ago, Marie told me she had a call waiting from an Erick Truman who claimed to have information about Denise! I got him to come into the office and he showed me a letter that he had ‘won’ in a card game that was purportedly from Denise … she wanted me to come and get her from the ‘trouble’ she was in on the Umbqua C mining station …
Erick seemed to be on the up-and-up and had come to me out of a mix of philanthropy and self-interest. The first lead I had had in weeks, I questioned Erick closely about how he got the note and the station named in the note, before rewarding Erick and sending him on his way (he was going to hire on as crew to any ship that would have him).
The station was less than a day’s flight, so I rapidly began putting a team together. First I called my brother who went to meet Erick and get his own take on the story, but who else to take? Looking over the details of the people that my brother and Ramona had recruited, I settled on Barbara ‘Babs’ Hollis and Ray Preston. Hollis was an intrusion specialist – ideal for the covert op I was envisioning – and Preston had been a career NCO – just the dependable sort I wanted. We would also need a medic – just in case, I hoped – so I picked out Mark Williams – he seemed experienced enough to handle the sort of environment I was afraid we might encounter …
Along with those three – who with me and my brother would make up the insertion team – I planned to ask Velldin and Ramsay, as medical backup and pilot respectively and Steve and Vinny as security for Liberation.
The team planned, I called them all in one at a time and asked them if they would volunteer for the ‘mission’ – much to my relief they all agreed, all though Williams seemed a bit hesitant, so I changed my initial line up – Velldin would be on the insertion team and Williams remain on the shuttle.
My brother returned and although evincing some doubt about the speed with which the job was being put together, he agreed with my reading that Truman had been reliable, so we set everything to go in two hours.
I explained the situation to Samantha and Marie, who were both very understanding and told them we should be gone for at most 2 days. If anyone asked after me, I had ‘flu and if I didn’t return, Samantha was to take over.
Everything set, we left the station, Ramsay piloting, the rest of us deep in study of the plans of the station’s class that we had been able to get.
It took us the best part of a day to get to the station. When we came out of jump in its vicinity, we found that Truman had been right – the station did appear very run down, and had no active sensors running – much to everyone’s relief.
So, as we had planned, Ramsay drifted in toward the station with the system’s sun directly behind us – this would be in the station’s IR sensors’ dead spot. Apparently undetected we were able to drift right up to the station and then manoeuvre round to the emergency airlock that we had selected for our insertion, where we were able to latch the shuttle onto the station’s outer hull.
Being the intrusion expert, Hollis was the first one into the connecting tube and she soon had the station’s airlock dancing to her tune. Once inside, we headed for where we thought the accommodation would be located, but not before we had obscured the glass in the airlock door … it wouldn’t have done for someone to stroll past and see the shuttle!
Realising that we would not be able to find the needle that was Denise in the haystack that was station without some clue, we found a side-room that held a couple of people and interrogated one of them after sedating the other.
Our captive told us much about the set-up on the station. Apparently refugees in cold sleep were being delivered to the station. Before they were awakened, a tracking chip was inserted into their arm and then once awakened they were left to their own devices on the station. If they wanted food, they had to report for work, and periodically sweep teams were dispatched to find those people who did not report, who, when captured, tended not to be seen again …
As to Denise, our captive had no idea, but he thought that someone he called ‘The Preacher’ might be able to help us. Having everything this guy could tell us, we sedated him as well, and left him some food as a thank-you payment.
Following the directions given to us by our captive, we soon located ‘The Preacher’ – a very impressive man, named Nathaniel. He was running an ‘underground’ church that tried to care for the unfortunates trapped on the station. He had heard of Denise, but did not know her current whereabouts, but thought that another man dubbed ‘The Ferret’ might.
In return for one of the pistols I had brought (and several spare clips) he agreed to help us locate Denise and took us to this ‘Ferret’.
‘The Ferret’ was a highly reclusive and strange man. He refused to come out from behind the machinery in the room where he hid, but shouted his answers to us – all it took to pay him was something shiny. He had heard that Denise had been picked up by a sweep team after she had hurt her ankle and was being held in one of the sweepers admin blocks, so we headed off following his directions.
On the way though, we encountered some of the local ‘wildlife’ that Nathaniel had warned us about. Apparently a proportion of who had been through cold sleep suffered brain damage as a result and these ‘crazies’ ganged together and roamed the corridors of the station like wild animals, attacking all those that they met and, it was widely believed, indulging in cannibalism …
One burst of auto-fire from my SMG and a head shot from both Preston and my brother and the crazies were scampering the other way though …
