Episode 1

Starting: Wednesday, 2350-12-06 (Excluding Prologue)
Ending: Wednesday, 2350-12-06
(1 day)

Prologue part 1: The Terpsichore

As your ship descends through the vast expanse of space, the desolate moon Rhea comes into view. The Terpsichore, a general-purpose Light Frigate, well maintained in a previous life, now bears the scars of countless journeys. Its paint, faded and chipped, serves as testament to the many adventures and hardships it has faced. The ship, wide at the stern, tapering toward the bow, loosely resembles a metronome with a large bell affixed to the bottom. The exterior is unassuming. Its surface is dappled with metal pipes, antennae, and a multitude of small protrusions housing sensor arrays and exterior maintenance hatches. To the inexperienced it could be mistaken for a Martian ship. To most it was quite apparently a Belter knock-off produced by Cervantes Shipyards on Tycho Station.

A look at the inside tells a more complicated story: all Belter technology where passengers are allowed, plenty of exposed wiring, but elsewhere, Martian and UN military tech have been integrated in curious harmony. Most notable are the MCRN crash couches and UNN sensor suite package. Parts like these would raise serious eyebrows among most mechanics. Others will refrain from raising those eyebrows, but that kind of discretion always comes with a price. That price has grown increasingly out of reach for the crew of the Terpsichore.

As of late, its Epstein drive emits an uncharacteristic drone, and for quite some time, worn metal components send the occasional fatigued sigh reverberating through the hull. The sole passenger either doesn’t seem to notice or doesn’t care.

His journey to Rhea began amidst the chaotic dance of ships arriving and departing from Vesta station, the second largest natural body in the asteroid belt. The Earth-born scientist by the name of Dr. Emilio Castille had been desperately searching for something.

“I’m looking to go to Rhea. Just me. And some luggage. That is your ship, right?” the man asked, gesturing at the Terpsichore through the glass in the floor. “I’m familiar with your rates and I’m prepared to pay the requisite fee, plus some.”

This wasn’t the first time that Nikki, Captain of the Terpsichore, encountered a confused soul with deep pockets who mistook her ship for some reputable transport service. But she also knew better than to correct them. Usually it was some naive, well-dressed Earther or Martian, and this was no exception.

“Yes, sir. You won’t find a better one,” Captain Nikki replied, flashing a wry smile.

Dr. Castille brandished his hand terminal, and typed in a big number before showing it to the captain. Nikki had come to expect these naive customers to make equally naive offers, but at five times the going rate, her well-practiced poker face nearly cracked.

Alfie, the pilot, coolly welcomed the new passenger onto the ship for a two week journey to Saturn’s second largest moon.

Note:

Around this point, NoDot hacks into Emilio's terminal revealing some prior, heated communications with one Antony Dresden, an executive at Protogen, a large Earth-based biotech company. She manages to extract a copy of the messages along with a signature verifying their authenticity as being between the two parties. The message involved a lot of confusing dialogue about biochemistry(?), but NoDot couldn't make much sense of it. It looked like a work disagreement.

For most of the journey, the scientist kept to himself. This only further piqued the interest of NoDot, the ship’s resident hacker.

With the Terpsichore now mere minutes from touching down in a vast crater housing an outpost airlock, the pilot and captain conduct the final landing preparations. NoDot assists Dr. Castille into a passenger cabin crash couch. Their persistent but methodical probing finally exhausts the laconic scientist. “Alright kid. Here’s the deal. I am looking for something special. Something that could put the Epstein drive in the same technological category as a wooden stick with a sharpened end. And when I find it--"

Just before the scientist finishes his sentence, the Terpsichore shudders abruptly and the interior lighting shifts to a pulsating red warning hue. NoDot quickly secures themself into a nearby passenger couch.

A shrill warning buzzer fires for a moment, followed by a rhythmic cadence of beeps. Two slow low-pitched buzzes, three faster high-pitched beeps, then several more varied beeps and buzzes, all overlaid with complex harmonic tones. It’s an ominous song, sung by Belter ships in distress--each measure conveying vital information. This particular song is conveying the urgent need to repair two maneuvering thrusters. Until which, future surface launches will be prevented, and no contingencies will be available during landing procedures. That means Alfie won’t get a second chance to bring her down in one piece. But with over a decade of experience piloting the Terpsichore, the pilot’s gentle guidance is met with little protest from the weary ship. Amidst the chaos of flashing lights and shrill tones, it comes softly to rest on its landing legs, letting out one final mechanical sigh.

The warning alarms stop as Nikki re-routes some particularly frenetic surface radio chatter to the ship-wide comms. From what can be made out, a small and likely armed mercenary group is setting up perimeter security, assigning someone to each airlock. They’re also discussing the whereabouts of a particular… mechanic? Somebody on the radio definitely said “don’t come back without that fucking mechanic.”

The ship’s network routed the radio chatter into the helmets of the crew’s environment suits. Donning his in the cargo bay, the scientist pauses and inhales deeply. For two weeks his steadfast composure remained unbroken. Now it seems to have faltered, if only briefly. NoDot asks him what he’s going to do when he finds what he’s looking for. Seemingly distracted by the radio chatter, he doesn’t acknowledge their question.

While Alfie assists Dr. Castille in lowering an oversized hard case with the cargo gantry, NoDot and Nikki begin descending the ladder. The crater swallows the horizon on all sides, leaving a jagged tear low in the sky. A large haloed Saturn peeks out over it, providing a dim source of pale yellow light in an otherwise ceaseless night. The moon’s barely-lit surface is cleaved in two by the looming shadow of the Terpsichore.

Only a few other ships are scattered around the Delta crater. A large transport ship, a smaller one, a smattering of short-ranged research vessels, and a shuttle with an inflated dome is attached. It’s either being repaired, or it’s beyond repair and now serves as someone’s shelter.

The crew and scientist finally reach the entrance of the tunnel airlock. As the doors slide closed behind them, the hiss of artificial atmosphere fades in.

The scientist is the first to remove his helmet. Fidgeting to secure it to the top of the oversized hard-case that he dragged and bounced across the moon’s rough, icy surface, he waits impatiently for the inner airlock to open wide enough to wheel it through.

The crew removes their helmets too. The Terpsichore has been relaying the radio chatter into the suit comms, and it still hasn’t died down.

The scientist turns back to face Nikki. Visibly mulling something over in his head, he finally speaks. “I don’t suppose you’d offer a body guard service? I think I owe that mechanic a visit, and you might also, if we ever want to leave this rock.” And after a brief pause, “I’ll pay of course.”

The Security Job

Dr. Emilio Castille rents rooms for the crew of the Terpsichore at The Hive on Rhea. He reveals a bunch of pistols in his hard case and offers them to the crew for bodyguard purposes (only Alfie takes one, NoDot having their own SMG and Nikki refusing to use a gun), along with telling them what he needs help with: he is supposed to make a trade, but he worries something has gone wrong due to the aforementioned chaotic radio chatter. After changing out of their vac suits, the crew heads off towards the meeting place.

Prologue part 2: Kova

Rhea is not a place where people go for opportunity. It’s not a place to strike it rich, nor is it a place to retire in luxury. Rhea is one of two things: a testament to human stubbornness, and a place to hide.

Engrossed in the latest exo-puzzle, Kova absent-mindedly burns her tongue on her coffee. The daily puzzles brought straight to your hand terminal by Rebellious Games, Inc. rarely took her as long as this one, but if she doesn’t leave soon, she will miss trash day. So she reluctantly stows her hand terminal and leaves the sanctity of the inoperable shuttle she calls home.

Kova, a girl with her own vac suit, has a mutual agreement with Rhea’s premier night market, Neon Nexus. Autonomous combines scour the surface of Rhea for trace amounts of precious metals and the moon’s most valuable resource, Helium-3. A lack of regulatory enforcement means their worn-out parts regularly wind up in a heap somewhere just outside an airlock. Whenever this happens, Nexus sends alerts out to their scavengers. They call it trash day. They will buy anything valuable that their scavengers recover, but Kova always pockets the best things she finds.

Carved out by early mining machines and bridged together haphazardly by human settlers, the convoluted tunnels of Rhea were never meant to be a city grid. But Kova has an unusual talent for knowing the fastest route between her shuttle and anywhere in the outpost. She liked to believe it would make her the first scavenger to every trash heap, but usually it just means she leaves her shuttle a little later than she could’ve otherwise.

Today, trash day is just outside Whittaker Dome airlock. The shortest route is through Little Ceres--one of the longest contiguous stretches of tunnel in Rhea. Kova once overheard that it resembled the underground markets of metro stations on Earth, but she was more curious to know if it looked anything like big Ceres.

She also happened to be previously employed at a maintenance facility in Little Ceres. The owner, Gustav, has a reputation for being boisterous, friendly, and perpetually buzzed on whatever is in his flask. He never had anything bad to say about Kova’s work, but one day when she arrived for her shift, he told her to pack up her tools. He didn’t give a reason, just a sullen look. And she was too afraid to ask; too afraid that he’d learned why she was on Rhea in the first place. Somehow.

Since then, she would occasionally have a reason to be in Little Ceres, and every time she reached the end of the third bend, he was there. Perpetually buzzed on whatever was in his flask. Boisterously guffawing with strangers and the guy who sells döner kebab from a cart. Even more painful than being fired was that he would deliberately ignore her, every time. Not so much as a glance. The discomfort was almost great enough to make her choose a longer route.

Today, when Kova reaches the end of the third bend, she expects nothing different. But something is. Gustav is there, but he isn’t guffawing with the döner guy like every time before. Instead he is surrounded by irritable-looking men with rifles. One holds up a hand terminal just as Kova encounters the second thing that Gustav would do differently. He doesn’t ignore her. He points at her.

Running from CPM

CPM, the private security force of Protogen, tries to capture Kova, but Kova runs, ducking down various streets. She is quickly caught due to the looping nature of Little Ceres' alleys.

Prologue part 3: Talula

Talula Lavigne lived her life as a UNN combat medic right up until forced retirement at thirty-four. It was all she knew. The transition from enlisted to NCO doctor was rough for her. Medics traveled with the Navy, but NCO doctors were mostly grounded. She pleaded to be sent back to space, for nearly six years.

She was finally stationed at Rhea’s primary outpost medical facility in a military program akin to Doctors Without Borders. It wasn’t long before she could tell it wasn’t a good fit either. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever fill the Combat Medic-shaped hole in her heart, but she felt that if she ever did, it wouldn’t be on Rhea.

It wasn’t all bad though. At the end of nearly every shift she’d go to a nearby dive called On the Rock. But it wasn’t really the bar that she liked, it was Chel, the bartender. She was the only friend Lu had managed to make in six months on Rhea. They would talk from when her shift ended to when Chel’s shift ended, and then they’d talk a little longer.

But she wouldn’t have to worry about leaving Chel because her request to transfer was denied. Instead she was offered to be part of a special military operation on Rhea--an offer she took enthusiastically. She never thought she’d see the opportunity to relive those years of her life. Yet… again, something tickled in the back of her mind. Rhea was an OPA outpost. The UN Military had very little business being there in the first place.

But it wasn’t her place to ask questions. Her place was following her superiors' orders, and following the Hippocratic Oath.

Less than an hour later and she received her first orders. Reporting to a wing of the facility that she’d never had clearance to enter, the first thing she heard was muffled screaming. Before she could speculate, a plain-clothed but unmistakably UNN woman approached.

“Ah, Doctor Lavigne! This way.”

The woman ushered her into an operating room where a bloodied and barely-breathing Belter lay motionless on an operating table. Medical equipment lay at the ready, but there was no anesthetist nearby, and no surgical tech either. Talula’s instincts kicked in without hesitation, and she stabilized the young man, stitching up several wounds.

No sooner than she had closed the last stitch the woman came back and ushered her out of the room. Three men entered. One carried a small bag. For what felt like an eternity, Talula heard the same muffled screams, her mind racing and numb at the same time. The men left. The lady ushered her in. She sewed the boy up. Silently. The lady ushered her out. The men returned. More screams. In. Out. Screams. In. Out. Screams. In. Out. Screams. Then… silence. The lady did not usher her back in.

She walked out of view and then, clumsily in Rhea’s low gravity, ran faster than she’d ran since seeing combat. The shock was already starting to wear off, and the nausea was setting in. What did she do? What was she a part of? What was the UNN a part of? More thoughts raced through her head as she dizzily stumbled wherever her feet were taking her. Somewhere familiar. An operating room she’d been to many times before. And as if this nightmare wouldn’t end, three armed men stood before her, wearing armor that did not belong to the UNN--in tow, a screaming Belter girl wearing a vac-suit with no helmet.

It's getting Crowded in here

The head CPM security guard demands to know why the operating room door wasn't locked, and a smaller guard apologizes sheepishly. One of them points a gun at Talula and tells her to wait in the corner. Another has hold of Kova.

At this point, the crew of the Terpsichore and Emilio Castille show up to the same room, once again prompting the head guard to ask why the door still wasn't locked. Again, the other apologizes, and again incompetently doesn't move to lock the doors.

All parties at the scene--the crew, Dr. Castille, the security, Talula, and Kova--are nearly equally confused as to what is going on, and they bicker for a minute before agreeing to lower their weapons. Emilio announces this is where the trade was meant to happen, and that CPM has captured the wrong person. Alfie puts his hand on his gun, ready to raise it, when the main guard fires his SMG at Emilio from the hip, hitting him once. A scuffle ensues involving no further injury to the crew--ending with a spray of bullets from NoDot's own SMG, and a spray of red all over Nikki's fashionable clothes. Two of the three CPM guards now lay on the ground in a puddle of blood, and the third, the incompetent one who forgot to lock the doors, surrenders. He tells the crew that his name is Norville Rogers and he didn't want to hurt anyone or be hurt.

The Escape Plan

Talula tends to Emilio's gunshot wound, while the living all discuss what just happened. Deciding that they can't let Norville talk and potentially implicate them in the death of CPM security, but also that they don't want to kill him, they devise a plan to escort (read: kidnap) him back to their ship. Emilio insists that he needs more medical attention from Lu, and the crew learns Kova is a mechanic who could repair their thrusters. With both of them willing to come, the crew takes everyone back to their ship. All but Emilio don some spare scrubs from a shelf, dropping their bloody clothes and some medical supplies from the room into a duffel bag.

They cart the scientist out of the room on a gurney and transfer him to a wheelchair at the entrance of the hospital. Alfie keeps a concealed gun trained on Norville. The second issue needing solved is Talula and Norville's lack of vac suits. Kova and NoDot go on ahead out the airlock, while the remainder of the party splits to find vac suits before meeting back up in Emilio's room at The Hive.

NoDot and Kova make a pit-stop at Kova's shuttle habitat, where Kova grabs a lot of her things to bring over to the Terpsichore, already convinced that she'll be leaving Rhea on it. Along the way, NoDot hacks into the hospital's cameras, and learns about the existence of a mysterious secret room. They also learn the UN has permanent housing on Rhea, which is strange because they do not operate the government there. NoDot asks Kova if she wants to go investigate, and Kova replies no way, she wants to get out of Dodge. NoDot begrudgingly agrees to drop it.

The crew all arrive at the ship and interrogate Emilio about the failed trade, who remains cagey on who he is and what he knows, other than revealing that he was in fact the OPA Mechanic that CPM was looking for when they mistakenly captured Kova--also a mechanic, sold out by her ex-boss Gustav.

They agree to take Kova onto their crew when the Terpsichore leaves, giving her time to do maintenance and allowing her room and board in exchange. Lu also decides to join, both because Emilio still needs medical surveillance, and because she stammers about an existential crisis related to her work, and an uncertainty about what to do with herself now. The crew allow her to join without needing more reason than that--after all, there are plenty of open bunks.

While the crew works out logistics, Lu dutifully tends to Emilio, otherwise revealing no more about herself.

Norville continues to plead that they not hurt him.


Next: Episode 2