It seems Oswen had been trying to unjam a door that leads to one of the station's storage arms, in much the same way Hinsman had gotten you all into the central complex earlier. It was her misfortune that upon receiving a jolt from a maintenance tool the door had snapped shut, meaning it had been open to begin with.

There's enough juice left to get it back to where it was and you carefully retrieve the severed limb on the other side, slipping it into a biohazard bag. Taking a moment to confirm with Hinsman there's nothing he can do as far as reattaching it, you consider your options for disposal. An incinerator would the most straightforward, but those require an amount of energy that seems wasteful if not impossible to produce given the station's current reliance on emergency backup power for life support.

You remember then the walk in freezer in the kitchen behind the dining hall. At least that would keep it from rotting if it takes longer that expected to get the power on full. The room isn't able to maintain freezing temps anymore but it's still noticeably colder than the rest of the station, and the rest of the station is cold enough. Placing the bagged arm on a shelf, you halt a moment as your gaze fixes on the two bundled forms in the back. So you weren't the first one to have the idea to use the place as an impromptu morgue. These must be the bodies of the other two maintenance workers, Inea and Markov.

You go finish cleaning

You come across no shortage of corpses in your line of work and so you have little curiosity about these two, morbid or otherwise. When Matti awakens, Hinsman will question her about the deaths, but aside from some practical knowledge in the area no one here is exactly a forensics expert. That'll be the job of the team the Order will dispatch to deal with the situation out here.

You exit the freezer, pausing to grab a mop from a corner of the kitchen and fill up a bucket. Returning to where you'd found Matti, you go to work. The blood has begun to dry and it's obvious this will take awhile so you clear out your mind and focus on the task.

Back to the nursing station

Matti is asleep. Hinsman is seated at a table near the bed, freshly showered and changed into a grey jumpsuit identical to yours and looking exhausted. Karoff is nowhere to be seen.

"He's back on the ship seeing how much power we can spare," Hinsman tells you, before you can ask. "This medical station's about the only thing working as intended in this place right now. We need to at least get the computers up before we can figure out what all needs to be repaired and how. It'd be really great if we had a maintenance worker familiar with the place to talk to, but..." He inclines his head toward the young woman's supine form and shrugs. The end of what's left of her arm is neatly wrapped in bandages, but her face looks pale and strained even in her sleep and her eyes twitch restlessly behind her lids.

There doesn't seem to be anything you're able to help with here, so you start to head back to the ship to find Karoff and wind up meeting up with him in the arm of the docking bay. He's got a hovering platform loaded with equipment next to him and is attaching a power node to a panel.

"Oh, there you are Zee, perfect. I need you to distribute the rest of these EPNs around the central complex." He gestures at the platform. "I'll come along behind you in a bit and rig them up."

The EPNs--external power nodes--can be linked in to bypass dead or damaged areas in the regular power system. It's likely some trial and error will be needed but you doubt it will take more than a couple of hours if all he cares about is the main section and the docking bay. The other seven arms of the station can just stay sealed off until a proper repair team comes in.

You return to the central area of the station and begin setting down the EPNs near accessible panels and in a short while you've covered the perimeter and begin making your way back. All is quiet until just as you pass a narrow hallway you hear a voice. "Zani, get inside!"

You whirl, activating the short range laser weapon you always have with you. The voice had been a woman's, sounding frantic and seeming to come from close by. But you see nothing. You shine your light down the hallway you'd just passed, revealing a row of half a dozen closed doors on each side.

You search the hallway

You want to verify there's a threat before you call anyone else in. Even though you're not suited up at the moment you feel pretty confident in your ability to handle a few trespassers anyhow so there's no point in risking the others if they prove hostile.

You ghost down the dark hall opening doors one by one and shining your flashlight around. The rooms all appear to be crew quarters and although you search any place anyone could hide, they're all empty and only three show any recent signs of usage.

Retreating back to the entrance the hall, you widen the scope of your search, but after another half hour are forced to admit to yourself there's no one here after all. This wouldn't be the first time you've had...hallucinations in the past. Or whatever the technical term would be for you. They have to get pretty bad before they impair your ability to work, but the woman's voice had seemed so close and chillingly real. You'll have to keep aware of the possibility of it happening again now. If it gets worse, you know you'll have to report it, but for now you're just glad you didn't drag anyone else down here for no reason.

You return to the crew quarters to look once again at the rooms the current maintenance crew were occupying, although more out of curiosity about them than any expectation you'll locate your phantom voices. The walls of Matti's room are covered in projected images of performers and celebrities...you recognize many of them from the media Karoff downloaded from Camarov.

Inea's room contains images of a family, presumably hers, and several empty bottles that indicate she had a minor pill habit. Nothing illegal enough for you to care about--even less so now that she's dead--and most of them are expired anyhow and you suspect taken from the station's abandoned medical arm.

Markov's room is somewhat grubby with dirty clothes tossed carelessly around. Your eyes are drawn to his desk immediately as the only uncluttered spot in the room. After a moment you realize that's because his personal computer is gone. Every other room, even the empty ones, had one of the devices built into the desk surface.

You search for the missing computer

The crew quarters aren't large. If the computer is in here there's only so many places it can be, and a methodical sweep of the room, closet and bathroom finally turns it up--slid into a pair of brackets fitted to the underside of the nightstand drawer. Just as you slide it out, the lights flicker on. Karoff's triumphant voice sounds over the intercom, followed a moment later by Hinsman congratulating him.

You however have your attention glued to the activated screen. It's still an Order-issued computer so your wrist chip was able to get you in, and what you're looking at is intriguing. Four days before Markov triggered the explosion that took his life--and nearly took out an infinitely more valuable outpost--he started sending and receiving a series of encrypted messages on a private frequency.

What it all means or if it's even related to his actions at all you can't say just yet, but it's obviously something to look into. You take the computer with you return to where you left the hover platform. The main computer room Karoff's working in now is quite close so you take a detour to speak to him.

You frequencies

"Interesting. What was he up too, I wonder?" Karoff peers at the coded messages thoughtfully. "The main computer should be able to unencrypt these though. We'll just leave it hooked up here and let it do its thing. The damage report for the station is almost done compiling anyhow."

"How bad is it?"

He spins in his chair to face a new screen, chewing on a dirty thumbnail. "Hmm, let's see. This would indicate The Last Outpost is...yup, it's damaged all right. And needs repairs. From people who are not us."

"So nothing immediate needs attending to? There's nothing wrong that would put you or Hinsman in danger if you waited here a few days?"

"Well, unsealing some of the station's arms would be pretty fatal. They took the brunt of Matti's hack rerouting job and a couple lost atmosphere. The old medical wing itself is in real bad shape obviously, that's where Markov set off the first explosion. But all we really need is life support and power here and in the docking bay. We don't really have enough power for the rest of the station anyway as long as we're siphoning from the ship. I'll go and seal anything unnecessary off in a bit and then we don't even need to worry about leaving them with life support."

Good. That means you can leave here and continue carrying out your orders just as soon as this mess with the dead workers is sorted out.

"By the way, Hinsman is going to try waking Oswen up for a little while and then wanted us there afterwards to sort of put our heads together on how to handle all this," Karoff adds, nearly reading your mind.

You step toward the door. "I'll go now."

"Eh, what's the rush? But I'll be there after I finish a couple things. We're all just gonna sit around till the relief team arrives either way."

"I could go and take care of my mission while the two of you wait. Hinsman suggested that earlier, remember?"

Karoff snorts and shakes his head slowly as he turns his attention back to his screen. "Don't you ever get tired of working so hard?"

You're a little take aback by the question. "No?"

You matti's Story

Matti Oswen is awake and speaking with Hinsman already when you enter. They pause and look up at the soft whoosh of the door, but you take up position in an unobtrusive spot next to it and stay quiet till they resume the conversation. Oswen's words are hardly above a whisper. Her face is drawn and she's clearly in pain. Hinsman in his usual way is breezily taking her mind off things while leading her along to a series of key questions and not making it obvious that's what he's doing.

"...I don't know what happened to Inea exactly. She was just replacing some conduits in the old medical wing...standard stuff, it's got to be done every four years even in the areas no one uses anymore. Something fell and hit her on the head, he told me. But Markov was in shock, or something like it so he never really went into detail. He hardly left his room for two days, and after that he..." she swallows hard and then continues at his gentle prompting. "I mean, it never seemed that they were like, close close, but they'd worked together a long time, and I can't think of any other reason he'd do what he did."

"Was a report sent in about Inea's death?"

She nods. "We sent one, yes. Markov filled in the details of course, since I wasn't there."

Hinsman looks at her intently a moment, then begins asking her some simple questions about their routines around the station, listening patiently to her answers before coming back around to Markov. "So when did you first realize what he was doing?"

"Like I said, I'd barely seen him in two days. That wasn't unusual even when there were three of us if we happened to be working on different areas of the station, but I was worried enough about how he was taking things I even went and knocked on his door once. He wouldn't answer. Although that day that...everything happened he turned the intercom on a couple of times."

"What did he say?"

"Well...nothing. I could hear him breathing and got the idea he was about to say something, but then it would cut out. I was definitely on edge by that time and not sleeping well, but I kept telling myself a team would be here soon, they'd pick up Inea's body and station someone else here and surely they'd notice what a wreck Mark was and do something to h-help." She has to stop a moment, and draws a shuddering breath.

"And then what happened?"

I was taking a break in the main computer room...I'd decided to sit in a VR film actually, to take my mind off things. Then all of a sudden a bunch of alerts started sounding."

Something crawls along your arm and you brush it away. An ant or something is your immediate assumption. A strong fragrance of freshly cut grass lingers in your nostrils.

"Look at the birds, Mommy!"

"Zani, get inside!"

With the interference of the audio hallucinations you come back to yourself. An insect of any kind would be highly unlikely to have hitchhiked this far, and the scent of grass is not something you're certain you've even encountered enough to readily identify. Not to mention your sense of smell is rudimentary at best.

Oswen has been describing how she counteracted Markov's attempt to destroy the station. "It's almost funny, covering that exact scenario was one of the last things we did in training before they sent me out here. And it just hadn't really sunk in even then that he would really do something like that intentionally. But it worked just like they said it would."

Touching your arm, you vividly remember the tickling, crawling sensation and look carefully at your clothes and the floor. There is no ant.

You shake your head to banish these distractions and refocus. You don't want to miss anything important.

"There was a critical overload there in the medical arm where Mark had started the chain reaction, but I was able to redirect the worst of the rest into the arms next to it, so the blown generators were the only damage to the central complex."

"And when did you recover Markov's body?"

"Well he wasn't dead yet, is the thing. The emergency shields were still holding in that section and the computer showed a life sign so I put on a breathing mask and went to try and drag him out."

"That was risky."

She gives another shaky laugh as she recalls the events. "The anti-grav was already down, and I had to cross this section where the wall and floor was just...gone, so I was terrified the shields would collapse and blow me right out into space. And then when I got to him he was covered in blood, almost unrecognizable. He was trying to unlock a cabinet but his hands were all torn up. There was broken glass and like, shrapnel, all in his skin. Some of it looked deep. And...the most difficult thing was he just wasn't himself." Her expression darkens. "He'd completely lost it, really. He screamed at me to get away and struggled and fought me. I ended up slashing open my arm on a big piece of bloody glass--"

She falls silent a moment as her gaze drops to the bandaged stub. "Well. I guess that doesn't matter now, huh?"

Hinsman murmurs something sympathetic and she continues. "And then he just straight up tried to kill me. Grabbed for my throat, and I kicked him and...I don't know exactly, we got separated and I was trying to orient myself because I was panicking and, you know, the gravity. And then he was just dead. I wasn't really thinking at that point, I hauled him back to the central complex, I was thinking something could be done, like the nursing AI would help or he could be put in cryo or something, you know, like in the VRs...but then of course once we reached Central the gravity kicked back in and I couldn't move him anymore, plus I was bleeding all over everything. I made sure nothing else was going to explode and then went to treat my arm, and brought a platform to lift him later. I moved Inea's body then too...to, to the dining hall freezer." She sounds momentarily embarrassed and lowers her voice for that, as if she thinks the New Terra health department might overhear and swoop in and shut the place down. "Since the power was out completely in that section and we still had it on low in parts of Central."

Matti stops herself and winces. "I mean...not we. It was just me at that point. The most useless person around so of course I survived."

"You handled all of that as well as anyone could have and I think better than most," Hinsman reassures her. "The rescue attempt is probably more than I would've tried, and you had no way of realizing then how far gone he was."

"I just can't figure it out, why he would..." Matti trails off and shifts on the bed, closing her eyes and wincing. "I'm just so tired."

"Get some rest. You've been a great help and I think you've explained most of what I could think to ask."

"Why were you sealing off the door to the storage wing?" This time the question comes from you. Hinsman gives you an irritated look at the interruption. Perhaps your tone was too blunt for his liking, but it really is something that had seemed odd to when you were cleaning up.

"Oh. Well I knew all of you would be boarding soon, so I thought I should try to pull myself together and...you know, do my job for once. The power would be easier to get back on in the central complex if all the arms could be sealed off, and the storage wing door was jammed open."

You nod but say nothing.

Matti rests her head weakly against the pillows. "I should've just stayed there with my ice cream. I could really go for some now anyway, damn..."

"I'll heat up some dinner for you soon, from our ship," Hinsman promises. "I don't know about ice cream, we don't travel quite that luxurious, but we may have something that can pass as dessert around."

"Thanks," she gives him a wan smile and leans her head back against her pillow, her blonde hair spread out on the pillow to frame her strained face like a halo.

"Zee, let's go outside. I've been needing to talk to you and Karoff...where is he, anyway?"

You'd already turned to exit with Hinsman stepping out into the hall behind you when you both spot the pilot coming down the hall.

"Perfect," Hinsman says.

"I know I am." Karoff replies with a wink. "But did I miss anything important?"

You inference

"Miss Oswen gave me enough details on the cause of the damage to start writing a report, at least, but some things still don't sit right with me. Even if Inea's death made him suicidal I still don't understand Markov's motivation for trying to take out the entire station, for one..."

"He had the space crazies!"

"...I can't put that in a report. But unfortunately Oswen had very little contact with him following Inea's death. And we don't even really know what happened to Inea herself other than Zee's examination indicating blunt force trauma to the head."

"Ah, about that." Karoff fishes something out of his pocket and taps a button. "Relevant?"

A 3D image of an energy canister is projected into the air in front of you all. You recognize the type; the larger energy cells can be volatile, so the canisters are made with half an inch of steel and an interior enamel coating for protection. This one is about the size of a fire extinguisher, which is typical.

What's not typical about this one however is the is the dried blood and long strands of dark hair caught up on the outside of the sealing mechanism.

"Where the hell did you find that?" Hinsman wants to know.

"In the storage arm where Miss Oswen lost hers. There are a lot of spent canisters piled up in there, and I was looking for more power cables just now and stumbled across this one."

Hinsman's brow is deeply furrowed as he studies the projection. "That is just suspicious as hell. Has anyone had a look at the body yet?"

You and Karoff both shake your heads, and as Matti had just mentioned where they were stored, the three of you make your way to the dining hall.

The two bodies are on gurneys, zipped up in body bags in the back of the freezer. You open the bag holding the smaller form, ignoring Karoff's inquiries as to whether letting restaurant kitchens rent freezer space to morgues could be a viable alternate source of income.

Upon examination the dark haired woman's cause of death is immediately obvious, her skull on the left side having been caved in just above and behind the ear.

"Not a glancing blow, either. There's no way that happens from a spent fuel canister falling on someone's head. Not even a full one."

After a long moment he sighs and steps back. "All right, let's go over what facts we have. About a week ago, Inea Banca was doing routine maintenance in the medical wing and had her skull caved in with an energy canister. Markov Karst then goes into seclusion for two days, at the end of which he goes to the medical wing and attempts to cause a power overload that will destroy the station; a major act of treason against the Order that will render a number of Outer Rim colony worlds and ships unable to receive emergency aid and also kill the young woman who remains here. A bit dramatic even for a suicide attempt, but I suppose not outside the realm of possibility. When it fails he become violent when Oswen attempts a rescue and dies moments after. Miss Oswen sends out a distress call that doesn't seem to have gone through due to the failing power and waits here alone until we happen by. Does that all sound about right?"

You mull that over while he and Karoff discuss the details a bit longer.

"I'm sure there's more investigating we can do," Hinsman is saying. "The medical arm, for instance. That's where everything happened."

Karoff shakes his head. "Atmosphere and shielding has failed and there are holes blown straight through the plating. It'd be too much a risk just to satisfy our curiosity, even for Zee."

"Fair. It doesn't feel right to just sit around and wait on another team, though. We need to get together as much info as possible. It might be useful to read over the personnel reports again, and...oh! There's the report they sent in on Inea's death." Hinsman glances over at you. "And what about you, Zee? Let's see that sharp analytical brain in action."

"My brain's not any sharper than yours I'm afraid. And too bad, some kind of AI to analyze things might be more what you need right now." But you've been following a particular train of thought, and at his prompting you decide to give it voice. "But they didn't fill out a death report on Inea Banca. I don't know why Oswen claimed that. Banca was still listed as alive in their database when Karoff pulled up her file, right before we boarded. So in fact, I believe that..."

You say "Matti killed Inea and then Markov to cover her tracks."

"What?" Hinsman seems taken aback. "Where are you getting that from?"

Karoff scratches his head. "Uh, Zee, I know that was my original theory, but I'm not so sure now. Markov did try to blow up the station."

"Do we have any proof of that? Or of anything Oswen has claimed?" You wait. When neither is able to give a satisfactory answer, you continue. "It's a possibility we have to consider, at least. All we really know is that Banca and Carst are dead and that someone damaged the station in a way that made most of the evidence inaccessible. And that Oswen tried to seal off the entire the entire wing containing the murder weapon right after we arrived."

A couple of times while you were speaking Hinsman looked ready to interrupt, and now he cuts in as you pause, raking his fingers through his dark hair. "Zee, you can't seriously...urgh, I guess you're always serious. But Matti isn't a killer."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"Because dammit. I can tell when people are lying. Matti's not like that."

The force of his protest surprises you. "Can people tell when you lie to them?"

That at least gets a short laugh. "No," he admits. "But I've had a couple more decades practice don't forget. You can trust me on this one though, Zee. That little girl's not some cold blooded killer."

You frown. "I'm not denying you're better at reading people than I am. But at least one murder occurred and serious damage was done to a vital Order refueling station. You know I'm not saying anything anyone at HQ won't bring up. We need to look at real evidence, and for now all we have is one person's word for it."

"We're not qualified for this legal crap," Karoff complains.

"It's the Outer Rim, buddy, we make our own law," Hinsman replies. "Hell, nobody should've ever gone out this far at all."

"Well now you just sound like a dirty anti-frontierist. But my point is that according to their files, Inea and Matti are both from Camerov IV. Pop them both in cryo and aim them at the planet. They can sort out the murder and if Matti turns out to have done any of the damage to the station she'll be right there and handy to retrieve."

Hinsman laughs at that. "You make it sound like we're such good friends with the Camerovs. They'd just love us dumping her off and then swooping in to grab her again I bet."

"Yeah well I've got a dozen fusion torpedoes that say they won't complain too hard."

"Jesus Christ, I'm definitely not getting a bonus this year if I let you start a war. Anyway, everything else aside, Matti's lost a ton of blood and is pretty weak still. A cryo pod would be too much of a risk."

"If there's anything to Zee's theory, she could be a risk to us, keep in mind."

"Yeah, I realize that." Hinsman looks unhappy enough that you almost hope that you're wrong. You've been slowly losing your mind lately anyway, what's one bad theory?

"Well...we can check for the report," Karoff offers. "The one on Banca. Maybe it wasn't ever finalized and sent but we'll see if we can verify at least that much of her story. And if it exists it may have more details."

Hinsman nods. "All right, let's do that."

You interference

"I can absolutely, definitely, factually say with complete certainty , all serious, and not the slightest hesitation..." Karoff twists in his seat to regard Hinsman as he speaks. "...that the report on Inea Banca's death does not exist."

"Are you serious? Are you sure?"

"Hinsman, I don't feel like you heard me. Absolutely, definitely--"

"All right enough. Dammit. Did you check to make sure it didn't get caught in the buffer? Maybe it's still trying to send. The power hasn't been back on for long."

"There weren't any problems with the power at the time the report would've been made. That was before Markov pulled his stunt," you point out.

"Just check," he tells Karoff.

"Checking, and...nothing. Wait." He pauses and frowns. "Well none of these are the report, but it looks like a batch of personal letters Inea tried to send a day before her death never went through either."

"What do they say?"

"Hinsman!" Karoff gives a mock gasp and assumes a scandalized tone. "They're personal letters!" He's already pulling the first one up, and you catch a brief glimpse of Banca's smiling face at the beginning of a video before he switches to the readout and scrolls rapidly past pages of text asking how various people, children and pets are, some jokes about a co-worker having a crush on her and discussion of a new VR film.

"All pretty standard inane family garbage," Karoff says in helpful summary.

Hinsman frowns. "Well, make sure they don't get lost. I'm sure the family will think more of them than you do, considering. But why didn't it send? Were they isolated from the network before the power went out? How would that happen?"

"I'll tell you in exchange for a colorful parrot and a bottle of rum."

"You think so?"

"Oh, I know so, now. You see..." Karoff twists the screen so Hinsman can see it. You shuffle around behind him to get a look too.

"That's the same encryption the messages on Markov's computer used," you say.

"Right. Because it would appear that someone...can't imagine who...installed a little something to communicate with a probe somewhere. The probe in turn has been intercepting any outgoing messages, as of at least one day before Banca's murder. They're getting a little fancier with their methods but cutting communication before an attack is the classic technique."

"So, we have pirates coming this way? Well damn. If they started out right after everything went down they'd be about right on top of us too if they went into underspace from any of the neighboring stars." He considers that a moment and then shrugs. "But there's three of us and what, maybe a couple dozen of them? We've all fought with worse odds. We can hold them off till help arrives."

"Oh, but precious, naive little Hinsman, it's worse than you think. The probe has been intercepting all outgoing signals. There won't be any help arriving for Miss Oswen or for the station or ourselves, because no one knows we need it. Also, don't forget shielding and all defenses are down."

"Shit."

There is an encouraging beep just then and all eyes turn to Markov's computer.

"Well it's not the blueprints for an anti-pirate device so don't get excited or anything," Karoff says, picking up the device and activating the screen. "And it's not even finished yet, that was just the first run. Still, might be enough to give us a better idea of what the situation is."

You markov's Secret

Most of the text Karoff scrolls past is gibberish, but a few of the messages are partially deciphered. Even these prove frustrating however as even the ones where you can make out sentences are delicately phrased with deliberate obliqueness. But as the messages near the end, they suddenly start dropping the pretense.

"Ah, here we go. Well that's right to the point, isn't it?"

You peer over Karoff's shoulder at the screen.

^ou've al%ead^ killed ove% this. It's too late to back out now. ^ou can take ^ou% mone^ o% a hole th%ough the skull--we'%e coming fo% the package eithe% way, so ^ou'd do well to think twice befo%e ^ou do anything ^ou'll %eg%et.

As to ^ou% question, it ain't nothing but sweet %evenge, Ma%kie bab^. The^ tu%ned us back du%ing the evacuations. We couldn't 'p%ove' we we%en't infected and what we%e we to them but a bunch of shitkicking fa%mers and %anchers? Well we didn't have Hunge% but we got hung%^ ENOUGH limping a%ound the %im to find a new home and plent^ of us died of infection all %ight--just plain o%dina%y bo%ing Old Ea%th influenza that could've been cu%ed if we'd had even the most p%imitive aid. My wife and daughte% among them.

The o%ganization ^ou wo%k fo% has blood on its hands, and don't even think it stops the%e. A lot of ou% people ma^ have gotten complacent once the^ %esettled, all this talk of 'moving on', but that's just not fo% me and m^ f%iends. We won't fo%get and we won't allow them too eithe%. And I've made man^ mo%e f%iends %ecentl^. We'%e getting ou% %evenge, and I think ^ou know exactly how.

See ^a soon, Ma%k.

--W. Ho%seman


"So we've definitely got pirates coming this way." Hinsman says with a rueful shake of his head. "Or terrorists, anyway. Even better, right? And so much for your theory on Matti, Zee."

"Any theories on what the package is?" you ask after a moment's silence.

"Carst is from Galton Station, isn't he?" Karoff asks. "I think I saw it in his file. I've been there once or twice, and don't ask for what. But they all but advertise they're a black market."

Hinsman nods, looking grim. "Most likely blueprints for illegal weapons tech, or an ethics-stripped AI. Something small Carst could easily smuggle back over here the last time he was on leave. And something valuable and risky enough he'd kill anybody who got in his way."

Karoff taps around on the screen some more. "Too bad he didn't survive," he finally says with a sigh. "Because I'd sure like to kill him myself right now. Scans found the probe by the way. Way out there on the edge of the system."

"Oh really? That's something at least. Although it'll take time to get to and disable, and I'm not sure we can spare that right now. We need to start thinking of how to defend ourselves."

"The sooner we get a distress call out the sooner we can put an end to all this," Karoff says. "We're nothing but a target right now, with the defenses down and if there's enough of them they can wear us down eventually without much risk to themselves."

"Can the defenses be repaired?"

Karoff winces. "I was afraid you were gonna ask that. And technically yes, but it's a big job. The turrets are in every arm of the station and we'll need to get power to all of them, which means cutting back here in the central area."

They both sink into a grim silence for a bit, before Hinsman finally looks over. "All right Zee, I guess you get the tiebreaker. What are you most in the mood for right now?"

You take out the probe

With no time to delay or hesitate, you're moving toward the docking bay within moments of making your decision while Karoff hurries along behind you and hits you with a barrage of rapid-fire instructions and advice for piloting one of the ship's shuttles.

"Whatever you do, don't get it blown up!"

"I'll try my best."

The voices of your companions soon fade as you ease the shuttle out into the silence of space, aiming for the emptiest and coldest edge of the system and the coordinates Karoff pinpointed. You blink in and out of underspace a couple of times the way he showed you, or else the trip would take days. Risky in a populated or debris-filled system for someone without much training, but there's nothing much to worry about colliding with out here.

The probe is right where it's supposed to be. It'd be possible to target with a missile now, but your initial scan indicates it might be rather unusual in design. Retrieving it intact might lead to clues about its maker, certainly the sort of person the Order would want to shut down...or recruit.

You retrieve it.

You ease the shuttle closer, and closer still. The viewscreen isn't needed to get a visual on the probe now; you can just look out the window. It's small, but the slender segmented form puts you in mind of a wasp, with a pair of satellites making up the 'wings'. The design is sleek and something about it worries you. The longer you look at it the more you get the sense it's dangerous somehow. But that's just all the more reason to take it out of commission.

You bring it on board.

The shuttle has a pair of grappling claws for specimen retrieval which you now deploy. Moving with utmost care so as not to nudge your target and send it spinning off into space, you grip the probe and draw it into the cargo hold.

The hold door slides shut, and the grappling claws fold themselves back into place. Glancing at the probe on the viewscreen, you see a red light blink on. Before you can even wonder what that means an explosion rips through the vessel, splitting the belly of it wide open and spilling you along with the rest of its contents out into the space. You tumble among the shattered remains of what used to be the shuttle, and the last thing you think before you're vaporized by the detonating power core of the underspace drive is that Karoff will not be happy.