We were halfway through lunch when we arrived at the station. We docked near the station, and slowly entered, flanked by 4 regiments of Flashtroopers. As they began to spread throughout the station, I headed towards the main offices. There, I met the station's leader, a woman named Nikai. The office was a square room, with her desk in the center, behind her was a window showing the planet they were orbiting. We exchanged pleasantries and shared information on the current situation. According to her, the station had at that time not lost any ships to the so-called ”Hunters”. In fact, they hadn't heard of these attacks, until their supply ships started dropping off the radar. They needed the supplies, as they were in the middle of building a solar farm, to be more self-sustainable. After that conversation, I was led to my living quarters and set loose aboard the station.
The station was home to over 200 people, and aliens. I was able to meet a few of them when we went to the cafeteria for lunch. Among them, a priest for the Frokism religion, who was named Zakarune. He spent about ten minutes talking to me about his religion, but I eventually lost interest. My first mate, Jinola said that she heard him attempting to convert Nikai. She also introduced me to one of the cooks, named Zahan. He gave me a hint as too which foods to eat, and which to avoid. After dinner, I headed back to my living quarters and fell asleep.
By morning, we had received word from the federation that there was another wreck discovered nearby to us. Taking a glance out of one of the space stations many windows confirmed this, as there appeared to be an empty ship floating nearby. We were told to pull the ship in and search it for any clues. Using the station's tractor beam, we were able to bring it into the hangar, where it was moved into one of the empty warehouses. Zakarune wanted to join us, but we didn't let him.
The ship in question was a small gunship that happened to be passing by the quadrant when it had been attacked. The planet the ship had come from, and which government had sent it out was unknown, as all of the logos on the ship had been scratched out, and burned. There were ten bodies aboard the ship. The word ”HUNTED” was scribbled at several points throughout the ship. After scanning the area for fingerprints, I left the gunship alongside Jinola to give our reports on the findings, leaving a few Flashtroopers, and scientists behind to do a final sweep.
Just as we left the warehouse, we heard a large explosion behind us. We ran back into the warehouse and found a large hole in the wall, and the remains of the gunship, along with several burnt out bodies the gunship must have an explosive planted in it somehow, but we had scanned the ship for any explosives several times! Medics immediately began rushing in and taking people who had survived, as they were far enough away from the blast. I reported this to higher-ups in the federation soon after this and began working to figure out how an explosive had gotten onto the ship without us noticing.
I rechecked all of our scans of the ships several times, trying to look for anything we missed. Still, there was nothing. Rumors of what had occurred were now spreading throughout the station. The nickname "Hunters" was starting to spread like wildfire, and Zakarune took advantage of the situation to start hosting more prayer circles for the deceased. The moment I left my quarters, I saw at least 10 advertisements for these circles, and 20 people going to take part in them. By this point, Nikai confirmed with me that that there were no explosives found before we were called upon to head to the station's morgue.
In the morgue, the bodies from the day's events were being laid out. Most of them had large burns or other wounds throughout their body. All the bodies were already being scanned by machines throughout the room.There we also met the stations doctor, a man named Zangar, and his girlfriend, an Araket name Nake. Jinola was already there and watching over the situation. When asked why we were summoned here, Zangar responded that we had a problem. There were 14 people still in the room when the explosion went off. There was only 9 bodies currently in the morgue.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
