Prologue: The Curse of the Abdusala

General Summary

Our story begins with the crew of the Flying Circus, a ragtag crew of itinerant workers from different worlds across the Third Horizon.
The Flying Circus crew are on their way to Coriolis Station after paying passage to crew the antique Zalosian salvager of the same name. Many have saved up for their entire lives just to escape whatever past they once had. Unfortunately, for a chance at freedom, they are indentured to work as it’s crew to pay off the debt they owe to their mysterious patron that leased their ship to them.
Each crew member carries within them a personal burden; a past they’re running from or a future they’re running towards. Trapped between the literal and figurative space of the past and future, the crew of the Flying Circus have one thing in common. They all have high hopes at finding a calling for themselves in the majestic space station of Coriolis — the jewel of the Third Horizon. Many of the crew have answered a call for applications at their local Colonial Agency and have been placed in Coriolis by random lottery. Some of the crew dream to make it big, to find their rags to riches story. For others, they simply want to have a bit of stability that they couldn’t get in their despotic, weather-beaten backwater colonies in the far reaches of the Third Horizon.
Whatever their reasons are, this band of strangers, nay, star pilgrims are brought together by the fate of their live’s consequences. Whether it be by the will of the Icons or of their own luck, no one really knows for sure.
There is one thing for certain at the moment. A blinking red light on the bridge of the Flying Circus has started to go off, and no one really knows what it’s for.
The night shift crew of the Flying Circus hear an alarm shortly after noticing the flashing light. Sultan, one of the workers on shift, pipes up and asks Inses, the ship's pilot, what the light is and if they should be worried. Inses takes a quick glance at the light, shrugs, and calmly says he has no idea. Sultan being a little irked, but the pilot's nonchalant answer, then tells Inses that he's going to look for Alpha-69, the preacher if he might know what the light is for. Inses tells him to go ahead, but repeats how there's nothing to worry about and that it happens from time to time. Alpha comes in to take a look and figures out that it is a communication's signal coming from a space station a few CU on the starboard side of the ship. Inses confirms this on his data readouts on the bridge and finds that the signal is a distress call.
They decide to move in closer to investigate the station and the signal. The space station is showing some recent damage from blaster fire, some of the life support systems aren't working, and weak life signs are scattered across the station. Being as poor as they are, Sultan, Alpha-69, and Inses decide to land in one of the station hangars to see if they can rescue the survivors and salvage some goods to earn some cash on Coriolis Station. As they land, they see that power across the station is down as the emergency lighting is on as they land on the hangar platform. Alpha-69 and Inses find out at one of the computer terminals in the hangar that the station is called Alhudu Docks and it is currently owned by the Legion, an elite mercenary corp. Realizing that the station being a military facility, they predict that they would receive a pretty profit if they find any survivors and loot aboard station.
As they investigate further, they see that the interior of the hangar is a mess of debris and blaster fire scorch marks all over the walls in the hangar. It seems that there was a firefight in the hangar, but interestingly, no bodies.
Meanwhile, one of the coffin beds aboard the Flying Circus opens and Chandra wakes up from her cryosleep. She finds out that the coffin bed malfunctioned and didn't wake her up to help out the night shift crew. She looks outside and sees that they've landed on a space station and decides to get off the ship to see what the crew is up to. The crew quickly fill her in, and they jump into action to explore the station.
The crew find the elevator that takes them up and down the different levels of the station, but they find that it isn't working because the station's reactor has been powered down. They find that they can access the different levels of the station by using the elevator's maintenance shaft. They decide to split up; Alpha and Chandra go up the shaft to see if they can access the habitation modules of the station while Inses and Sultan make their way down to the reactor level to restart power across the station.

Access Denied

Inses and Sultan decide to go down the elevator shaft. They see a pitch black tunnel with no light below. However, as Inses starts climbing down the ladder of the maintenance shaft, he slips on a bent rung and starts falling. Sultan, thinking quickly, sticks out his sword -- the sharp end, for Inses to grab. He decides not to take the sword as he'd rather fall to his death than chop off his fingers before falling to his death. Fortunately, after falling two levels down the the shaft, Inses manages to catch a rung from the ladder and save himself from falling. Unfortunately, Sultan, trying to go after the falling Inses, slips himself on the same bent rung and he starts falling to his death.
For a brief moment, Inses and Sultan lock eyes as Sultan passes him down. Inses tries to catch him before he dies, but isn't quick enough. Sultan falls a few levels before he hits an alcove in the shaft. He's hurt, but thankfully not dead. Inses catches up to him and sees that he is okay, and they continue to the reactor.
When they reach the reactor, they are met with a bulkhead door, but it is electronically locked. Inses decides to take it apart to see if he can hack the system to open the doors. However, as he does so, the station's security system locks him out as he isn't fast enough to hack through the system. Unfortunately for them, the security system has a military-grade fail-safe system, and has completely locked them out with no chance of hacking in again. Inses finds out that the only way for them to unlock the doors is to find the station manager's passkey and use it in the control room in the habitation modules. Having no functioning communicator, Inses and Sultan call out into the maintenance shaft to Chandra on her way to the floor to the habitation modules to find the station manager's passkey while she's up there.  

Life Support System's Offline

Meanwhile, Chandra and Alpha make it to the topmost level of the station, the habitation deck, and find themselves in front of an airlock door. According to data read outs on the control panel in front of the airlock, there is no atmosphere and life support systems are offline in the habitation module. Opening the airlock would be dangerous for Alpha since he has no spacesuit, so he decides to go back to the Flying Circus to monitor the situation and keep himself safe while Chandra opens the airlock.
She opens the airlock, and Inses and Sultan shortly join her to explore the deck. They see empty ammo crates everywhere. Rifles and pistols are strewn all over. They see broken track lighting and the red emergency lights of the station have doused Level 6 in a red hue. Interestingly enough, all the weapons are unusable since they’ve been cut clean down the middle — like a hot knife through butter. They are all damaged beyond repair. They see the same situation as seen down in the hangar; scorched walls from blaster fire, debris, and live wires hanging from the ceiling. The holoscreens in the promenade are playing an emergency evacuation message. Smoke drifts up from a smouldering blast hole in the middle of the central hall. Someone set off a grenade earlier.
Using her environment scanner, Chandra locates the life signs that were detected while they were out in space. She sees three life signs on the deck: one inside a cryobed on the south east side of the station, another in the control room, and another inside the station's main workshop. They decide to investigate the person in the cryobed first.

Uh? Do You Really Want to Open It?

They reach the cryobed, and in it, they find a dock worker unconscious inside. Looking more closely, they see that the man is a Legion lieutenant named Raqqa Al Duwais. Before anyone could do anything, Inses suddenly engages the cryobed's wake sequence. To everyone's horror, the cryobed starts to open in the vacuum, and the man starts to go into shock. Gasping for air, the man's eyes roll over and Chandra springs into action to restart the cryobed sequence. Thankfully, she saves the man, but not before glancing a stern look at the rather murderous Inses who almost killed their income.
They decide to go the workshop since it is protected by an airlock and see a woman alive inside. She holds up her gun and asks the Flying Circus crew to step away from the door before she kills them. Sultan steps in to calm her down and introduces himself and the crew, but not before saying he's an author and trying to peddle his book. The woman, being suspicious, asks the crew what they're doing on the station. The crew explains that they heard a distress call and came to investigate. The woman looks at them in horror saying that everyone's dead, and no one could possibly send out a distress call. She further explains that she wouldn't have done so herself because there is something dangerous onboard the station that she doesn't want any unfortunate people to meet their demise with. Chandra then asks what the dangerous thing is and how is it that the woman is still alive.

The Curse of the Abdusala

The woman introduces herself as Yasin Sabaaha and that she is a researcher onboard the Abdusala, a Foundation research cruiser currently docked at the station. She starts her story by saying that she was part of a 56 man research team investigating deep space on the the outskirts of the Third Horizon. The team was investigating portals and pathways into the legendary Fourth Horizon system when suddenly their ship was overtaken by a dark presence. It took over the bodies of some of the crew and warping their bodies into inhuman beings and started killing the crew. In the middle of deep space and light years away from any inhabited planets, she decides that the most humane thing to do is to kill off everyone in the ship in the ship's decontamination chamber so that they won't suffer the terrifying death of their monsterous former crew onboard the Abdusala. She manages to trick the surviving crew into the decontamination chamber and flash burn them alive for a quick and painless death. She decides to steer the ship into a nearby star to kill herself and the beings onboard. Unfortunately, she was chanced upon by a Legion patrol ship and they towed the Abdusala into Alhudu Station against her crying protests over the ship's comm channels. As soon as the ship docked onto the station, the entity onboard the Abdusala started taking over some of the Legion soldiers and turning them into the very same monsterous beings that attacked her ship. She ran into the workshop and locked herself in and has been surviving on an emergency ration kit. She tells them that they should leave immediately before the entity discovers they're onboard. The Flying Circus crew tell her that there are other survivors to save, so they'll leave once they find them. The crew asks her how to turn on life support on the habitation deck and she tells them that it's possible to do that from the station's control room a few rooms down from the workshop. The crew thanks her and tell her to stay put and that they'll be back for her once they restore life support, turn on the reactors, and find the survivors.

The Stranger With the Gun

The crew make their way to the control room and see a man also with a gun threatening to shoot them until they identify themselves. The crew introduces themselves and tell the man they're here to rescue him. The man opens the airlock doors and lets them in; however, he is a little suspicious so he keeps his gun trained on them. He introduces himself as Kares Sofas, a Legion officer and the station's quartermaster. The crew tells him that they received a distress call from the station and came to find survivors. He then tells them that he was the one who sent the distress call hoping that a ship would come by and save him. He thanks them for coming, and tells them that he's been stuck here since life support went down and couldn't venture outside since there weren't any exo shells in the control room. The crew ask him why couldn't he just reset life support from the control room. He then points at a dead body beside him. It was the station manager with a bullet wound through his head. The crew get a little suspicious and start training their guns on him. They start asking him why he shot him. He tells the crew to calm down and that he didn't shoot him; he committed suicide to die on his own terms rather than by the creatures outside. Chandra checks the body and performs a medical analysis. According to her scans, the bullet that killed the station manager matches the type of ammunition from the gun Kares is holding. The crew get a little more suspicious and tell him to drop the weapon. Kares gets a little frustrated and tells the crew that he took the gun to protect himself from the things moving around outside long after what happened to the station manager. The crew start to believe this as it sounds plausible, but then ask Kares what the station manager has to do with him not being able to turn on life support. Kares explains that the station manager holds the master key to the station's systems, but it's bio-locked to his living body. Because the station manager died, he is unable to use the master key and he doesn't have enough knowledge to hack the key to use it himself. Inses and Sultan try to hack the key and are successful, but not before finding security footage of what happened in the station. Up to a point, Kares and Yasin were telling the truth. Inses and Sultan see the events that unfolded when the Abdusala docked. Firefights all across station erupted with Legion soldiers fighting their possessed brethren. Security footage shows Kares running into the control room and Yasin is seen running into the workshop shortly after.
However, Inses gets curious and secretly starts watching the security footage of the control room as Kares walks in. To his surprise, he sees the station manager alive as Kares walks in. Kares is seen having a brief conversation with the station manager as he walks over to the very same security terminal that Inses is on. Kares looks up at the camera trained at the panel, smiles, presses a button the panel, and the screen goes dark. In the last few seconds of the footage, Inses and Sultan see a glimpse of the very same gun that Kares is holding behind his back before the screen goes dark. They both nod silently and turn to Chandra and nod to her. They all understand what's going to happen next and decide to spring into action. A firefight ensues as Inses, Sultan, Chandra, and Alpha try to get close enough to Kares to subdue him and take his gun away. After an exchange of pistol fire from Chandra, Inses goes in for a few quick hits with his stun whip and manages to stun Kares giving the crew time to tie him up with his own clothes. they turn on life support and restore power to the station. They decide to carry Kares unconscious body, wake the sleeping lieutenant in cryobed, grab Yasin, and head back to their ship.

They're Coming!

Chandra wakes up Raqqa in his cryobed. He starts convulsing as the shock from waking from cryosleep starts to affect him. Chandra, thinking quickly, engages the stimpack in his cryobed and he starts to stabilize. Raqqa wakes up and is terrified. He starts telling the crew that they need to get off the station now and fast. The things in the station will be coming after them now that they've turned on power. For some reason, the beings are active when there is active power in the station. Sure enough, one of the possessed crew members is seen stalking them from behind Raqqa's cryobed. Sultan, using his energies as a mystic, stops the being from coming any further and confuses it enough to give the crew and Raqqa enough time to make a run for it to the ship. Sultan tells the crew that he'll catch up to them as soon as he gets Yasin out of the workshop. Alpha, Chandra, and Raqqa make it to the ship while carrying Kares unconscious body. However, as they ran towards the ship, a large mass of possessed crew members starts to slowly making their way towards the hangar. The crew informs Sultan from the ship's comms saying that he needs to hurry as the beings will block him from reaching the hangar. Sultan acknowledges this and grabs Yasin and they make a run for it to the hangar. The Flying Circus pilot, Inses, decides to fly the ship out of the hangar without Sultan onboard. While out in space, they see that the Abdusala is missing. Checking the ship's scanners, they find the Abdusala flying towards them, and the Flying Circus start to take evasive maneuvers. They realize that the ship itself is possessed by the entity as they start to see a giant dark field emanating out of it. It starts to turn the field into the shape of claws and starts to lunge at the Flying Circus. After what seemed like a tense five minute chase around the station, the Abdusala takes down enough of the Flying Circus's hull to the point that another hit by the Abdusala would destroy their ship. Inses decides to push his skills to the limit and manages to lose the Abdusala and head back to Alhudu Station to pick up Sultan and Yasin.
Meanwhile, while the Flying Circus is being chased by the Abdusala, the beings onboard the station are hot on the tails of Sultan and Yasin running towards the hangar. As they do this, hundreds of former Legion soldiers turned mystical alien beings start coming at them. Sultan and Yasin make it to the hangar, but behind them are hundreds of possessed soldiers lumbering towards them. Sultan calmly tells Yasin to set up barricades and to take the emergency air kit they find in the hangar. Yasin panicking asks Sultan angrily why he is so calm in this situation. He smiles and nods and very vaguely tells Yasin that, in his book, one should enjoy life and to take what life throws at them. Seeing that this isn't any help, Yasin keeps herself busy by moving the debris and cargo containers to form a makeshift barrier between them and the beings. After a few minutes, the beings are less than 10 meters away when Sultan tells Yasin to get in a small cargo container with the emergency air kit. He tells her to give him her gun and that he'll shoot at an ammo crate nearby to take out a few of the beings and blow them into space. Yasin tells him he's crazy, but he then says that it's better to be alive than dead, and besides, he can walk out into space anyways since he has an exoshell on and she doesn't. She sighs, and puts herself in the container and she hears an explosion outside her container shortly after.
The Flying Circus sees Sultan holding onto a small cargo container hurtling in space. Coming in a little hot for fear of the Abdusala catching up to them, Inses decides to open the cargo bay doors, turn the ship around and try to catch the flying Sultan and his container into the cargo bay while flying. With only one chance to get this maneuver or risk losing Sultan by hurtling into the nearby asteroid belt, Inses carefully aims the ship and prays to his icon for divine help. Sultan manages to aim himself into the cargo bay, engage his mag-boots, land himself, and strike a pose as the cargo bay doors close. Inses engages the engines at full power and flies the ship as fast as he can out of the area before the Abdusala catches up to them.

Aftermath

The Flying Circus makes it to Coriolis Station and they get rewarded for bringing in the survivors from the Alhudu Docks. The Legion eventually clears the station of the beings by sending in a small force to retake it. It is reported that the Legion find no signs of the Abdusala, and it is rumoured that it haunts the sector of space between Kua and Xene. From that time on, there has been several ships that went missing around the area.
Impressed with the crews actions, the Legion decide to give them free access to the Alhudu docks and complimentary repairs for life. The Foundation thanks the Flying Circus for retrieving their only survivor from their failed science mission, and that the data she has given them has been insightful. Yasin is sent to a Foundation-run medical trauma centre where she will get help for the things she saw and did onboard the Abdusala and Alhudu Docks. The Foundation reward the crew with a sizeable amount of birr for their trouble. Meanwhile, the security footage that Inses downloaded onto his tabula was enough for indict Kares Sofas for murder of a senior officer and sentenced to life in prison in Titan-161, the high-security prison complex run by the Consortium in the Rimward Reach. The Legion and the Consortium also give the crew a reward of birr for saving Kares and for bringing him alive to face justice by the authorities. Raqqa Al Duwais is given a small stipend and commendation for his survival on the Alhudu Docks incident. He is last seen being reassigned to another Legion detachment at the Legion offices on Coriolis Station. However, from that time on, no one really knows what happened to him or if he was actually reassigned since the Legion doesn't take too kindly for dereliction of duty, even if it means hiding in a cryobed to "sleep on the problem."

Report Date

21 May 2020