Chapter 3: Red dwarf and purple planet

Piloting

Scott smirks a little and nodes to Jerry 'Nice to see you man. Ye know boss was not happy with your drone expeditions ' He thinks for few seconds and scratches some pins on his mechanic hand 'But ye may be right. We should have some extra data. Oh and Anu could install some granade launcher to it as he sounds interested in them recently' ...wink... 'I think our new space visitors has some good pilot there'

"The pirates,?" Dotty asks ChiHiRu, "Do they come around here often or do the spend most of their time at the camp?"

She lays flat on the ground in the shadow of a large tree and pulls a small digital camera out of her pocket. Dotty plants her elbows on the ground to stabilize her hands and looks at the wreck slowly zooming in on interesting locations as best she can taking pictures and archiving them. ChiHiRu gets the impression that spying on a location from afar is something she is not unfamiliar with.

Adonis wanders into the workshop at about the same time that the others are discussing weapons.

"I don't know about a grenade launcher but our ship could use some additional weapons. I wonder if Dotty will find anything interesting on the crashed ship. If we get rid of the pirates, I'd like to take a closer look. Did someone says something about drone piloting?"

Scott points at Adonis and nodes "It looks the pilot piloted himself here on time"

Dotty stays perfectly still while she observes the wreck. There is no movement around it aside from a few animals that look like elongated hedgehogs.
As she takes a closer look she notices that a lot of things are strewn around the wreck. Crates, boxes and also a few corpses. They all look like someone hastily looked for useful items and then left the rest at the wreck. She sees no sign of occupants.
Another thing she notices is that the ship cannon attached to the portside seems to be pretty loose. It's definitly too big to carry alone but given the proper modes of transportation you could probably haul it back to the camp

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Anu smirks at Scott and the newly arrived Adonis. Well we do have some dynamite sticks here. If we construct a simple "ignite-and-release"-system we could construct a little bomber. But I fear that this is the exact opposite of stealthy. Hmmm... we could spray some chemical agent on the pirates instead...

Like itching powder? Hehehehe Jerry chips in and pats Adonis on the shoulder Well whatever we do with the drone we seem to have our pilot here. But we need a second one to control the camera, and possibly any attached systems. It's not easy to fly the drone and take pictures at the same time. I'd do it myself but I think Dr. Salmberg would kill me if she found out I participated in another drone flight. She was furious with my first one...

For a moment, Dotty is not certain ChiHiRu registered the question. After a few long seconds however, the tablet translates.
"The pirates roots are deep at the camp."

Dotty quickly compresses the pictures and saves them onto a flash card before wiping the memory on the camera. She tucks the card into a hidden pocket in her jacket before pulling a handgun out of a holster concealed in the small of her back, chambers a round and puts the gun back.

"I'm going to go take a quick look, see if they missed anything." Dotty says with a wink, before working her way stealthily down the slope to the wreck. She looks carefully about as she moves for booby traps or sensors of any kind grabbing a hand full of powdery dust.

ChiHiRu doesn't respond. He just stand there and light a cigarette.

---

Dotty makes her way to the wreckage. A few times she thinks she spotted a mine but it's just those hedgehog-like animals.
Without incident she arrives at what is left of the space ship. There are no sensors, turrets or any other defense systems in place.

At closer inspection Dotty can see all the things that are strewn around the ship. Emergency sealant, parts of vac suits, empty packages and a lot of debris. There don't seem to be any interesting things left.
Directly in front of her is the hole in the ship's hull. The hole is easily big enough to allow Dotty to enter it. She activates a light at her handheld device and shines it into the opening.
Dotty can see a corridor that extends into the ship for about 3m (10 ft) and then continues to the left and right in a T-shape. There are red and black smears all over the walls.

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Dotty examines the smears taking some more images with her camera hoping it’s not blood and guts.

While the black smears seem to be fluids that originate from the machines of the ship.
The red smears look a lot like blood. But they look very old und crusted so it could be that some unfortunate soul stood here when the ship was hit.

Scott laughs "Don't ye worry kiddo. I will do it with mr. pilot this time. I think I can handle our boss dr. quite well"

Dotty just gives the ship a very quick once over, how many bunks were there how many bodies there are. She’s looking for a rough head count. She also looks to see if there’s a weapons locker, guns how many and what types? Looking for the empty racks and any loose cartridges on the ground.

Jerry winks at Scott and says Well I must go now. I hope you DON'T use the drone control terminal while I'm working on something else. I will certainly NOT leave the door unlocked and the access code is NOT 55641. Take care Scotty
Jerry leaves the room.
Anu looks at the others You need anything else from me? Otherwise I'll work on my automatic septic tank scrubber robot...

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Dotty enters the ship through the hole. The interior of the ship is mostly intact apart from the mess of empty containers on the floor. At the rear are the bunk beds for the crew. Dotty counts twelve of them. Here too nearly all containers were opened. Dotty looks through the lockers and finds a fully intact and new flight suit of the pirates. The suit is black with dark grey stripes and fixed to the chest is an emblem depicting a skull and a lighting
This suit is brand new and looks like a uniform. Damn the whole ship looks like it just came from the shipyard Dotty thinks
And in fact this ship is missing the usual sign of wear and tear that you'd expect from a ship that has been in use for any significant time.
Dotty proceeds to the front of the ship. Here she find three rooms that seem to be reserved for the commanding staff.
Three more... That makes fifteen pirates Dotty thinks
The cockpit is small but it too seems to be brand new. In the pilot's seat is a corpse with the head stuck in the panel in front of him. A holster holding a G6 semi-automatic hand gun is attached to the belt. The seat of the co-pilot is empty.

---

ChiHiRu finishes his cigarette while he waites for Dotty to finish her survey of the ship. He flicks the cigarette butt away and watches the hole on the side for Dotty to reappear. Suddenly he smells smoke. Fanned by the constant winds the cigarette butt has lit a patch of purple grass-like plants on fire.
ChiHiRo quickly rolls over to the spot and hits at the flames in order to extinguish them.
ChiHiRu has no trouble to put out the fire but then he notices something lying in the grass. A helmet... a pilot's helmet it seems

Curious, ChiHiRu pick up the helmet to inspect it. He will then beat up a few other patches of grass to see if there is something else hidden nearby.

Derek checks his gear and gets ready to move once the scouting is done.

Dotty takes quick photo's of the interior, the pirate symbol and the state of the art newness of everything.

Once she's done that she heads over to the corpse in the pilot chair, she unties clips the leg belt and then the main belt on the holster and takes the whole belt along with any ammo pouches and anything else attached to the belt including the sidearm. "Sorry 'bout this mister, I mean you ain't got much use for it now then do you?"

Ugh the was something well awful about robbing the dead but dead is dead and he was in no position to argue.

Dotty headed outside, she counted the corpses outside and subtracted them from the 14 crew members she had not accounted for, then she headed up the hill towards Chi, quickly transferring these photos to the sim-card and putting it back in the secret pocket in her jacket.

"Anything interesting?" She asked ChiHiRu as she adjusted the belt on the pistol fitting it for her body as best she could.