Adventure!

You have been living and working aboard the interstellar scout ship Raptor for the last couple of weeks, having joined the crew at the nearby Tondra-3 spaceport. The ship’s captain, William Darcy, was not entirely forthcoming about his reasons for needing a new crew at such short notice, but he seemed harmless enough. In any case, you’re pretty sure the weird rumours swirling about him were just that: rumours. Any successful captain is bound to stir up ill-feeling among the crews of rival ships, right?

You have spent most of the time since leaving Tondra-3 getting used to your new responsibilities and running routine checks on the ship’s upgraded systems. The Raptor has certainly seen better days but, as the captain is fond of saying, she has it where it counts. You assume that he’s specifically referring to the cargo hold when he says this, since that’s where the enormous, frigate-class cloaking device sits bolted to the deck, gently humming within a tangle of power cables.

You were beginning to get quite adapted to the rhythm of life aboard ship when, early this morning, a message from the captain was sent to all hands: Feeling a bit off today. Probably just a hangover, but I am going to sleep it off in the medipod. Absolutely no interruptions!

No major issue. The systems are almost all up and running, and you will arrive at the Gate in a couple of hours. Then it’s just a case of waiting your turn to quantum tunnel to the next star system over.

And then, two minutes ago, the ship-wide alarm calling for all crew to report to the bridge…

The bridge crew is minimal – the Raptor only needs a few people to run the ship under normal circumstances, and everyone on board was hired on by the captain at Tondra-3 at the same time as you were.

A young helm officer turns to you, Abara, and in answer to your question replies, "We just picked up a distress call. Here, let me replay it." They tap on the console in front of them and, after a second or two, you hear a voice, punctuated with violent bursts of static.

"are attacking the … with three, no, four … shields failing … no time."

The message loops a couple more times before the helm officer turns it off and looks to you all with a worried expression. "With Captain Darcy, um, out of commission, you’re the ranking officers. What shall we do?"

"They didn't broadcast for long enough to get a full position lock," they reply, "but it came from the general direction of the Gate." They gesture to their screen, on which a broad line traces a vector from the monolithic Gate structure—orbiting at the very edge of the planetary system—to the Raptor's current position.

They then busy themselves with sending out your message.

"Maintaining course, aye sir." Steede nods. "At our current velocity, we will be within scanner range of the Gate in just under 30 minutes."

"Coming into sensor range now," says Steede, as a holographic image materialises at the front of the Bridge. Redstone, this also pops up on your super-sweet space-phone-camera-communicator-scanner thing.

You all immediately recognise this system's Gate, and that something is very wrong. All space-faring civilisations use Gates to bridge the immense distances between the stars and, because of this, the queue to use them is usually pretty long. Maybe hundred on a slow day. As the hologram continues to resolve, though, you don't see an orderly line of spacecraft; you see a halo of ships scattering in every direction at maximum velocity.

"Aye sir! Running simulation." Steede busies himself with his console, and an overlay appears on the holographic display: the ships slowly arcing back towards their origin...