Forgotten machines and more...

Although our last mission was hazardous, it also gave us the Mantella. After selling the Mantella we could repair the Black Moth, and each have Birr to spare. Jezebel was very glad to see mee when we picked her up at Surha. Then we went to Djachroum, where we had an appointment with Dr Samah.
 
Dr Samah was very interested in investigating the Mining Baron's Palace on the D14-165 astroide in the Ashala Belt. He had a map to get there, so we agreed to take him there. In return, we get to keep whatever we would find there. Apart from interesting archeologic finds, this particular astroid also has a lot of the very valuable Maghfan ohr. So we took enough mining equipment with us. We al prayed in our chapel that this mission would be less dangerous than the last one and we would return successfully with some beautiful archeological finds and al lot of Magadan Ohr. Strangely dr. Samah never really said what he wanted in the Mining Baron's Palace.
 
We landed successfully with C.A.R.L.'s help. It must be said, Shamus his piloting skills are improving. Dr Samah and Armand joint us on the bridge just before touchdown. We could see the three abandoned vehicles not far front the palace. The story about the vehicles nearby the Mining Baron's Palace was that nobody really knew where they came from and who took them there. It looked like they were standing there forever. As soon as we landed Dr Samah wanted to go to the palace as soon as possible. We decided to go to the vehicles. Maybe we could fire them up so we could use them for mining.
 
The distance tot the vehicles was not far, but to far to walk, so we flew with the Mogüm Sum to the site. From the three buggy one was dangerously hanging on some sort of ledge. De ground beneath it seemed unstable, so we stayed clear of that one. Shamus and Armand checked out the first one. Shamus was able to decrypt the lock of the first door. When we got in we saw that the buggy was out of power, but other then that it looked good. Armand decided too use a power cord to draw power from the Mogüm Sum, and .... it worked. We saw the first buggy slowly get to life. It would take about 30 minutes to fully charge the battery. Armand plugged in a second power cord to the other buggy, but then there was a short circuit and the connection broke, causing an electrical discharge running through the cable going right to the ship. Wtf.... We tried to pull the cable loose from the ship, but it did not work. Armand and Shamus even tried to shoot it loose. At last Armand managed to cut through the cord using his wire-cutter. No luck with the second buggy, but the first one was stil charging.
 
Suddenly my communicator began to bleeb. It was Dr. Samah. His panicking voice indicated that he was in trouble and needed our help. We jumped in the ship and flew to the entrance of the palace. We looked inside where is was dark. We walked in carefully following the footsteps of Dr. Samah in the dust on the ground. It led us to some kind of hall. There in the middle we saw the body of Dr. Samah. When we came closer we csaw that he was dead. Shot by something and someone. We looked around anxiously, bus saw no-one. We grabbed the Tabula next to the body of dr. Samah and ran back to the ship.

The Tabula contained a diary entry and an audio file. When we played it, it was like some kind of riddle. We couldn't make heads or tails from it. What to do next. We had a problem. Dr. Samah was dead, we didn't know who killed him but we couldn't leave the body behind. Armand and I decided to go back and collect the body to put it in one of the stasis pods to take it back to Djachroum. Shamus stye behind to watch the ships. We took our fire arms with us, just in case.
 
When we made the body of Dr Samah ready for transport, we suddenly heard a voice. When we looked up, we saw a young woman stepped out of one of the connecting rooms. She told us to leave, that it was Dr. Samah's curiosity killed him. And before we knew it she ran away. We thought about shooting her but that was not such a good idea, so we decided to follow her. The woman was very quick and we couldn't move as fast as we wanted because of our heavy exe suits. We contacted Shamus and asked him to fly the ship to the other entrance so he could block her path.
 
The young woman didn't lead us to an other entrance but to some kind of crater. We saw her step into a small ship to make her getaway. Luckily Shamus was nearby. We got on the Black Moth and followed the ship, that C.A.R.L. identified as The Swallow. I decided to attack it, hoping to slow it down, to get us close enough to board is. We succeeded the first time around, hitting her with our Ion canon. But we didn't dot enough damage to slow her down. She simply was to fast for us. In hind side we should have taken the Mogüm Sum, the Black Moth was simply to big and slow to catch up to her. We broke off the pursuit and went back to the astroid, still hearing the voice of the woman making fun of us.
 
Back on the Astroid we first put the body of Dr. Samah into the stasis pod and tried to get more information. De mission that look easy and would make us pitch, turned into a nightmare. We had a dead Dr. Samah and without a good explanation for his dead body, we could not return to Djachroum. To get more information we went back into the palace. We followed the small footsteps from the woman an this lead us to a small room where there stood a terminal with flickering lights, indicating it still worked. We found out it had to do with some kind of bio sculpt. After uploading it into your body, that person could shape shift into any one he wanted completely, body and soul. The bio sculpt was not fully tested and still had some glitches. So uploading it into your body was a great risk and even could be lethal.
 
When we looked at the terminal we saw three buttons. The buttons indicating Destroy and Download where not functional anymore. The only option was to upload. We had to strongly convince Shamus that uploading it in to him was not a good idea. Het just recovered from the nanites. Who knows what this bio-sculpt would do to him. To make sure no one else could use the terminal we blow it up. Armand was glad to use his flag granate for it.
 
Although Armand still wanted to mine some of that Maghdan Ohr, we knew the best option was to follow the young woman. She was the one who downloaded the code of the bio-sculpt. C.A.R.L. found out, after scanning her ship, that the woman, named Amyra ,was heading to Ahaleem Station in the Black Sector, home to a Biosculpt manufacturer: " Bayieaans Fake Face" .

Because we didn't want to leave the buggy behind, we loaded the buggy into our hanger to take it with us. And then we flew off to Ahaleem Station, doing some praying during the flight, thinking we could use some help from the gods.
 
Docking at Ahaleem station went without any problems. We were told to report our arrival at the terminal. We were greeted by a computer voice asking our name and upbringing. It was clear that they didn't like Zenethians around here. This ment that Armand and I had to be extra careful.....