I always admired my Captain: He was a man of great intellect and not afraid to act, and for the tough decisions he usually deferred to his own moral compass that seemingly pointed true every time. Usually I try to reason things out with logic, yet many times the Captain would let his ethics make the final decision that would always turn out to be right.
Until the day we found the Roanoake.
We intercepted the distress beacon while making the run between Dralax and Shadizar, often nicknamed “The Ghost Run”. Only a few freighter captains will run it – there’re plenty of things to go wrong out here, and you’re a long way from home.
On The Ghost Run, we’ll occasionally bump into the odd Combine military vessel “patrolling” for pirates (generally it’s better to avoid them as well, you never know when they’ll get jumpy and blow you into the vacuum), but the Roanoake was something different – some kind of new design, we saw her launch only a week ago from Earth via The Link, and it takes a full three months for the current generation of military ships to get out this far out on the Rim.
So I guess that left us with two questions: How the hell did the Roanoake get out here so fast, and why did she look like she’s been dead in the water for some time? Her hull almost looked, well, decayed would be the best word.
“This bodes nothing but evil outcomes, Sir.” I said. “Best we report to the Authorities and move along?”
The Captain stood there with his classic look of fatherly concern (hard to pull off when you’re so young, but then again he’s been through a lot) – his bushy eyebrows meeting together as he pondered the Roanoke on our screens.
“Can’t hurt to take a quick look, Jane. Prep an away team and bring us around to dock.”
I had a bad feeling about this.
***
I am Starmonkey 