Public Ghost Stories

[Aldric]

Original by Hakob Minasian​

There were many things and fates to fear in the deepest reaches of untamed space, countless ways to meet one's end. From hypermatter containment failures to chance encounters with rogue neutron stars mid-hyperspace transit. With fifty-thousand lightyears of galaxy in every direction ready for exploration, 'anything goes' was the rule rather than the exception.

One such fate was to get lost without rhyme or reason, doomed to drift through space for the rest of time as one of the ghost ships. Tragic vessels said to haunt the sparsely populated Rims, Wild Space, and the Unknown Regions. Seasoned sailors of the star seas hailing from those regions speak of vengeful crews of dead smugglers. More rational heads claim that superstition clouds the judgement of anyone who spends too much time alone in hyperspace and that any such sightings were merely previously undocumented species or coincidences.

Aldric did not count himself among those more rational heads. At least not anymore. Certainly not while he stared out of his small freighter's viewport as the ship he sat inside of was sinking into a mirror-like, light-blue surface. The malleable whatever-it-was had appeared out of thin air directly in his path while he was at full thrust. He wasn't sure how the collision hadn't turned his small freighter into a cloud of space dust, but his miraculous survival was the last thing he thought about.

The freighter's engines, already strained at their limit, were engaged in reverse, to little avail. Inch by inch, the freighter sank deeper into the surface, pulled by unseen mechanisms. It wasn't long until the viewport met the surface, fortunately withstanding any pressures that may have acted on it, only to clear up again moments later as the ship came to a halt with a sudden lurch and a thunderous crash.

The sight that greeted Aldric was more than astounding. A gigantic, curved room stretched out before him for what seemed like miles, filled with the carcasses of hundreds of ships of all sizes. Only dim lights illuminated the area, but the sight they provided was nothing like the pristine surface outside. Everything seemed steeped in grime and debris, as though an avalanche of mud had rolled through a technological graveyard.

Aldric took a moment to appreciate the sight. From his limited vantage point, he could already make out a few vessels long thought lost to time. From the tall head of a hammerhead corvette to the unmistakable solar panels of an unusual TIE-craft, the field of ships before him was a treasure trove of galactic history.

He barely contained his excitement as he jumped from his seat to grab a breathing mask and backpack. The distress signal switch was little more than an afterthought as his circumstances, and method of escape, were pushed to the back of his mind.

History was calling.


_____________
OOC: The Gorgorror is a big ol' ship. Feel free to launch your own little expeditions into the depths of its interior. Ideally, we get a bunch of salvaging and history with an edge of spooky business. Get creative!

 

[Jerec Asyr]

Not far away, a rusty Spacer Guild beacon began to pulse. Its coded message contained coordinates and potential trajectories of a ghost ship sighting - the legendary Gorgorror.

Quelle salvage!

OOC/ I'm too swamped for another thread, but this seems like a good opportunity:
Aeshi Tillian , Alkor Centaris , Allyson Locke , Amea Virou , Ar'tal Ktruok , Tris , Ay Ge , 3X744, Cotan Sar'andor , Dash Kessler , Davin Skirata, Dax Perl , Frielle Kinniak, Furch Lund , Galen Arterius, Gilamar Skirata , Jorco Czeku , Julius Sedaire , Kaleleon , Kara Moonlighter, Kelsie Sylvan , Kenth Haruss , Kingsley , Kole Eckttor , Kyra Quez, Liam Sedaire , Stace de'Lorne o'Breac , Lucien Dooku , Maynard Treicolt , Miri O'Hare, Muk Moadda, Nova Casamyr , Orson Jade , Ria Misrani , Runi Verin , Subject 73 Red , Sylvia Virtos , Hal Vaiken , Umedara Zaar, Wynter Rackham , Yula Perl , Zak Amroth), Zef Halo , Zivos

 

[Salcor Sand]

With a grunt, Salcor switched off his ship’s transponder. The distress signal he was picking up on should’ve been in his view by now. So where was it? Stifling a feeling of annoyance, he reached down to start pinging off his ship’s sensors. If they even worked. The ship, which didn’t belong to Salcor, was so old and rust-ridden that it was a miracle it even flew, let alone was able to endure the terrors of space. Ah, well. Maybe whoever was sending out a distress signal would have a better ship...

A flash of blue filled the viewport. Surprised, Salcor just managed to flip the kill switch and shut off his ship’s engines, nearly colliding with the husk of an old freighter. The crunch of metal on metal, followed by a scraping squeal, assaulted Salcor’s ears. Salcor’s head met the dash of the cockpit with a crack, and all went dark.

Salcor came to with a start. His face was warm and sticky from something, and judging by the faint smell of copper within the cockpit, it wasn’t hard to guess what it was. With a slight groan, Salcor did a quick damage assessment on himself. Besides a gash on his forehead and some scrapes and bruises, he was relatively ok. All his equipment was still on him and serviceable. The same couldn’t be said of his stolen ship. The rusted underbelly of the freighter was broken and ripped apart in multiple places, as Salcor quickly found out from the red light of a flare. The ship was irreparable, to put it plainly.

Fortunately, Salcor was surrounded by ships. He was no historian, but the majority of them looked ancient, and the cavernous, filthy hanger he was in seemed to stretch on forever. Where the hell he was didn’t matter so much right now. Perhaps it was from the impact, but Salcor had a very bad feeling about this place. Something in his gut told him to get the hell out, right now. But at the same time, with all these ancient wrecks here, one of them must hold some decent salvage...

“I’m gonna regret this,” Salcor muttered to himself in a gruff croak before jumping out the airlock of his wrecked ship. Going against his gut was almost always a bad idea, but the opportunity to salvage something really worth a lot of credits was too good to pass up. Salcor compromised with his gut: find a working ship with some decent salvage aboard it, then get out. If he could get out.

Salcor double checked his blaster pistol and vibrosword slung at his hips, then shrugged a dirty, torn backpack on his shoulders before beginning to lumber over to the nearest vessel, some orange and grey hammer-headed monstrosity. With a quick glance at his mask’s oxygen gauge, Salcor saw that he had about a standard day’s worth of air to work with until things got bad. Plenty of time.

Unless something went wrong.

Aldric

 

[Kardek Alpha]

THE HARBINGER, OUTSIDE THE GORGORROR
Tags: Aldric Jerec Asyr Salcor Sand

The Harbinger dropped out of light speed near the coordinates of the beacon. Kardek leaned forward, looking through the viewport of the cockpit as Alpha, his IG-88 Assassin Droid, continued to pilot closer to the coordinates. He was not a salvager for the most part, but as he was in between ops, he had decided to engage in some explorative treasure hunting. It was a fun pastime of his to pursue ghost ships, knowing that often long lost treasures were lurking in their halls.

Kardek spotted the massive vessel as it slowly began to appear in front of them. His eyes widened at the scale of the ship, with a slight smirk crossing his face. "Look at that beauty, Alpha." He commented as the began to make their approach. "What treasures await us I wonder?"

 

[Salcor Sand]

The thumps of footsteps echoed throughout the dark, empty hallway. Dim, red light seemed to barely pierce the darkness surrounding Salcor as he waved the flare around, trying to see as much as he could within the rusting passageway. Without a more powerful light source, Salcor was stuck with limited visibility. He had a headlamp, perfect for situations like this, but it stopped working after he dropped it one too many times. So, for now, Salcor’s world was limited to the dull red sight granted by an emergency flare.

There wasn’t much to see just yet anyway. The ancient Hammerhead wasn’t too hard to get into. A few minutes of work and Salcor managed to gain entry through a now defunct airlock. With the amount of rust coating the outer surface of the ship, that was a small miracle itself. Fortunately, the rust seemed to be merely permeating the surface of the ship. Compared to other vessels within the gargantuan hanger, it seemed to be in decent shape for its age, and probably would contain the rarest salvage. Flying the beast would certainly be a challenge, especially for one man, but how hard could it be?

Now Salcor stood in one of the ship’s many hallways, carefully maneuvering towards the bridge. Debris was scattered throughout the corridor, making walking through a pain at best. Twice, Salcor irritably had to prevent hanging cables from pulling his mask off. One time, he swore he felt the sensation of a hand running across his back, only to discover that it was just the open door of cabin protruding into the hall. Once again, Salcor had a bad feeling about the situation, and what happened here became clearer.

Judging by the state of the interior of the ship, it looked like the Hammerhead was boarded, and an intense fight took place within. Pale red light revealed carbon scoring and missing pieces of durasteel along the walls, with large items dragged out within the corridors to provide some sort of makeshift cover. In several places, it even looked like grenades and other explosives went off. Who fought here and who won were of little concern to Salcor; what he wanted to know was where all the bodies ended up. There was simply no trace of anybody here: no bones, pieces of armor, weapons or equipment. So where were they?

A bang from further in the ship made Salcor freeze for a few seconds. The pounding of blood in his ears couldn’t cover up the faintness of what sounded like footsteps further ahead. Closing his eyes for a moment, Salcor muttered a few choice words beneath his breath before continuing forward towards the sound. Soon, his footsteps began to crunch, and the flare’s light revealed that Salcor was walking on broken glass, which funneled out from a half-open door. As he approached the door, Salcor began to make out the rust-covered, barely legible words upon a plate next to the opening:

MEDBAY

Taking a moment, Salcor braced himself for anything at all before he shoved a shoulder against the half-open, carbon scored door. With a heave, the door began to creak open, and light began to trickle into the medbay, revealing what was within...

Aldric Kardek Alpha

 

[Kardek Alpha]

THE HARBINGER, OUTSIDE THE GORGORROR
Tags: Aldric Jerec Asyr Salcor Sand

The freighter began to slow until it finally came to a stop with a good distance still between it and the ghost ship. Kardek killed the engines and hit a switch, activating a cloaking mechanism for The Harbinger. The entire ship from the outside seemed to flicker for a moment, and then disappeared from visual observance and became undetectable to most radars.

Kardek leaned back in his chair and let a sigh escape his lips as his eyes wandered across the outer hull of the massive ship in front of him. There was a distress signal that seemed to be originating from within the vessel. Could be a trap. He found his original excitement was beginning to mix with a strong sense of suspicion.

"Best to wait here for a few moments buddy." He said to Alpha, "Lets see if we can detect any life on board." Kardek reached over and activated his scanners, beginning a deep scan of the belly of the beast.

 

[Aldric]

Light steps carried Aldric out his freighter's landing ramp and into the muck of the starship graveyard.

Millennia of wreckages stretched out before him for what seemed like miles, though through the dim darkness, Aldric still could not discern the source of light, hindered any proper estimate.

He capitulated any attempt to make sense of the greater whole and instead started towards the first object that caught his interest, an old Hammerhead, with the justification that the history was before him now, and its sustained availability was anything but certain. Placing such academic pursuits above his safety may have been reckless, but an opportunity like this rarely presented itself twice.

Aldric sighed away disappointment at the end of his short journey. The walk towards the corvette was short and uneventful. No angry custodian of immortal technological nature crossed Aldric's path, nor did any shipwrecked representative of one of the extremely long-lived species of the galaxy jump out in a crazed delirium. The Hammerhead, to boot, looked exceedingly ordinary, though well preserved. He could be thankful for that, at least, as he assessed its hull for an opening.

High up, he spotted a breach where the rusted exterior. Soot-stained plates bent into the Hammerhead's gut, obscured by a tangled web of wires and twisted metal of the framework which held the hull together.

Directly below, Aldric crouched and let the Force course through his limbs in preparation. Force Jumps like this were not his forte, but he came across enough ravines and pits of deadly traps to gain adequate proficiency with the technique. Aldric leapt off the ground, soaring through the up along the Hammerhead's hull. At the apex of his jump, he grabbed onto a loose bundle of cables and, using them for support, climbed into the wreckage.

What awaited him on the other side was a dark tube that ran alongside the ship's hull, what must once have been a ventilation shaft. It was narrow and cramped. The metal looked unrefined and lacked a coat of paint.

Tight spaces were decidedly not Aldric's thing. He leaned back to risk a glance along the hull, finding no other way to get in, and sighed. He set one foot in first and pushed against the shaft's floor. When it didn't budge, he climbed inside.

The crawl space was roomier than it appeared at first glance. Either darkness had obscured its proper dimensions, or Aldric's frame was smaller than he remembered. Either way, he began crawling with little idea of where he was heading.

Several minutes and a winding labyrinth later, Aldric came to a sudden halt. Crunching sounds reverberated through the ducts, breaking the silence that had otherwise only contended with the subtlest shuffling of Aldric's robes. The noise itself was too quiet to discern an exact location of origin, the only clue was a grate further up along the ducts. Aldric inched his way towards it, stopping to peek down.

The room below was, like the rest of the ship, quite dark. A trail of broken glass glinted in dim red light to form a path across a narrow corridor flanked by what appeared to be sick beds, their covers half-torn. From his vantage point, Aldric couldn't make out anything else. He'd have to remove the grate to gain a better picture. Carefully, he wrapped his fingers around it and began to lift. The metal resisted for a moment then jerked up slightly with a subtle crack, which caused a scattering of rust to fall through the room below and onto the floor.

Salcor Sand | Kardek Alpha ​

 

[Salcor Sand]

Salcor’s flare light trickled into the medbay, reflecting back towards him from a thousand broken shards of glass. It took a few moments for him to fully comprehend the damage that the room had taken. Several cots laid strewn about, beds either burned black or tossed aside completely. What was once some sort of medical droid laid rusted and decrepit in the corner of the medbay, torn apart and shattered beyond repair. The source of all the glass was easy enough to find, with the remains of about ten or so healing tanks at the epicenter of the shards. After all this time, the floor was still sticky with what, judging by the smell, could only be kolto. The walls, rusted and scored, showed more damage than the hallways leading in, which was a considerable amount. Twisted, charred machinery sat about in piles, warped and blackened. It didn’t just look like there was a shootout here, but also a fire, and several controlled explosions...

Something wasn’t adding up.

All signs of battle were present from within the ship, but the exterior showed no damage besides a bit of rust. Salcor furrowed his brow, thinking about the strange situation as he carefully began to stalk through the medbay, his senses working on overdrive. The fighting from within seemed one-sided, now that he looked at it from a different perspective. All the blaster fire, the grenades, and the fire seemed to be aimed towards the medbay. Barricades were damaged, showing signs of blunt force breakage, from one side and one side only...the side facing the medbay.

Salcor’s brow furrowed even deeper than it had already been. Time to abandon ship, I think...this place isn’t worth the trouble.

Above!

From overhead, a subtle crack, like a twig snapping, reverberated throughout the medbay, and a sprinkling of rust floated down on top of all the glass scattered on the floor.

Subconsciously, Salcor pulled out his blaster and squeezed off two shots towards the overhead ventilation system behind him, closer to the entrance of the medbay. The sharp barks and green lights of his pistol flooded Salcor’s senses for a moment, and as it subsided, the scavver moved fast, sliding across the floor to an overturned cot. Salcor winced as he felt glass tear at his legs and the warm drip of blood began to seep into his thin clothing almost immediately. Disregarding the pain, he reached his impromptu cover and aimed his blaster pistol towards the vent shafts hanging above, with two new smoking holes in them. Salcor was trying hard not to panic, which was an uphill battle. Why didn’t he trust his gut?! There was something in this ship, something awful, and Salcor didn’t come all this way, overcame all his obstacles in life, just to die to some galactic horror, alone and afraid.

Salcor’s breath grew ragged. Offhandedly, he wondered how much oxygen he was wasting hyperventilating like this, and focused on calming himself. First step towards that: creating more light. Salcor grabbed another flare with his free hand, popped the cap, and threw it back towards the entrance of the medbay. More red light flooded the room, exorcizing the shadows and casting most of the clinic into sharp relief. Silence met Salcor for the moment, and while most times he welcomed it, this was not one of those moments.

Aldric Kardek Alpha

 

[Kardek Alpha]

THE HARBINGER, OUTSIDE THE GORGORROR
Tags: Aldric Jerec Asyr Salcor Sand

It looked like there were a couple of life forms on board, but nothing to imply an ambush or a trap.

"Good." Kardek commented, "Alrighty, lets gear up." Kardek and Alpha made their way to the gear lockers, where Kardek loaded up his dual TSF-SBP/01 Heavy SmartBlaster™ Pistol’s with some varied munition strapped to his utility belt. Alpha Loaded up his heavy repeater cannon, as usual. They both strapped on their jetpacks and made their way to the drop zone.

Kardek stood on one ejection port and alpha on another. They both looked at each other. Kardek, with a dead-even expression on his face, said, "Alpha... You know... you look straight sexy with that cannon. All those droid'etts don't even know what their missin' out on." Alpha stared at Kardek for a moment... then started to move his pelvic region back and forth, ever so slighly. Kardek busted up laughing.

"We're idiots." He said as he hit the eject button.

The two shot out the bottom of the ship, heading straight for the ghost ship. As they approached the hull, both of them activated their jetpacks, slowing their approach until they both landed firmly on the hull. They both knelt down and grabbed onto the hull. Kardek started to scan the surface, looking for a good way for them to enter the ship.