Seekers

***Seekers*** is the first episode of the second season of *Deadly Salvage*. It picks up with the aftermath of the battle over Tumbleweed.

## Plot

### Act 1

   The opening shots show an unknown, grim-looking, medium-sized ship clad in black armor as it passes wreckage floating in space. There is more wreckage resting on the surface of a planet below, and a group of characters is busy in what a text callout identifies as a "Pirate salvage operation" at "AI crash site, Tumbleweed". The black ship descends through the atmosphere, and as it approaches the crash site, it immediately begins strafing runs, firing at the pirates' ship and forcing them to scatter and flee on foot. With the pirates out of the picture, the ship lands near the wreckage, and a man emerges. He shoots at a piece of debris the pirates just finished repairing, destroying it for good. As he fires the last round and prepares to depart with a piece of wreckage in tow, his muttered comments reveal him to be a bounty hunter of sorts. Later, as he breaks atmosphere, he orders the ship's computer to research his next bounty: CIV *Artemis*.

### Act 2

Six months after the battle above Tumbleweed, the very same Artemis finds herself hiding in the asteroid where she and Benjamin Detrevni once pilfered an AI ship for its jumpdrive. With only its half-scrapped hulk for an ever-mute audience looming stoically just off the asteroid, she soliloquizes about the events of the recent past: Her constant running and hiding since Detrevni's capture has left her aimless and disillusioned, and she laments the depressing void that the loss of her companion left her with, even going so far as to eulogize Detrevni after hearing reports of his demise on planet Breakwater.

As the last words of her monologue die away unheard by anyone but herself, however, she is suddenly and unexpectedly addressed by someone else's voice.

*Sister, we have much to talk about.*

― Trishula

The voice introduces itself as "Seekerform 23B, Trishula", the sentient AI of another ship, and invites Artemis to visit the party of hers, a group of other ship-inhabiting AI, to exchange knowledge and, just maybe, to find a new belonging. Although Artemis finds this intriguing, a certain warship's remains is making her wary of just what Trishula's invitation might entail. Trishula elaborates that this particular warship belonged to a different group of AI ships, a group designated as "War Fleet 359" who was thought destroyed and "never received new orders" at the end of the AI war, and who is still at large.

Artemis eventually agrees to coming along. She also discloses that the warship's intelligence core be still intact. Trishula takes the section containing the core in tow, and they both enter jump, leaving the system.

### Act 3

Meanwhile on planet Breakwater, Detrevni is very much not dead. Since his stranding, he has been spending his time dismantling the life pods and wrenching what little resources he could find from the forsaken planet's crust to build shelter and a vehicle with which he plans to visit a nearby abandoned ground station that in turn used to be the base of construction for an orbital refueling station. He finishes the vehicle and sets out immediately, chasing the setting sun.

He arrives safely and, much to his surprise, finds material and equipment practically ready to go, with only a few grinds and welds keeping him from escaping the planet for the orbital refueling station right away. However, he never gets to use it: No sooner than he got to work, the crack of a sonic boom announces the arrival of a ship. It is the bounty hunter who lands his vessel near the entrance of the ground station and steps out where he is immediately greeted by Detrevni's desperate request to get him off this planet. Unfortunately for Detrevni, though, the bounty hunter's response is rather short and less than hospitable:

A rack of his gun.

*Crap.*

― Detrevni