Intergalactic Summit

Speaking of Tuesday, I just recalled another tale shared to me by one of my staff two Tuesday ago in a bar in home station. It probably involved cheap liquor but eh.

So yes. Stations in warzones that do not see high capsuleer residency are staffed by the skeleton crew. And being staffed by just the skeleton crew, most parts of the station (I estimate around 80% at least) is typically deserted. This does include the docking bays, by the way.

No, they aren't sealed off because of some accident or whatever. In fact, they aren't even sealed, though the local inhabitants generally do not go to these places for any reason unless they are in groups of five and loaded for Ursas.

This story is about one of these groups.

So yeah, two years ago (yes, this is another friend of a friend stories. Don't groan), a group was travelling through one of the deserted hallways searching for spare parts. A typical salvage run, for spare parts to repair broken-down dock machinery. As usual, there's that strange noise in the vents and that scurrying under the floor panels. When they passed one of the docking bays, either docking bay twenty six or twenty seven, they heard something that sounded like a ship docking. Here's the thing though, docking bays twenty six or twenty seven is inside the unoccupied parts of the station. Obviously curious and a bit on edge, thinking that there might be armed smugglers around, they went to investigate and, well, who knows? Broker a deal or something?

Here's what they found instead.

A Cormorant-class destroyer docked, surrounded by marines and personnel. They were bearing Caldari Navy insignias. Pretty strange visitors but not unheard of, especially since docking restrictions in FDU-controlled systems are only applied on members and contractors of the State Protectorate and the 24th Imperial Crusade.

Proxy wars are funny like that.

So yes, seeing all that activity, the group of salvagers figured that they could maybe procure some spare parts from this lot, so the walk up to those people intending to barter.

And to nobody's surprise, the Caldari Navy marines pointed their guns at the group and started firing. Yelling about spies and saboteurs. The salvagers fled, losing about two of their guys in the process.

Thinking that the Caldari Navy marines were some kind of Black Ops and will pursue and silence them, they hightailed back to the occupied parts of the station and scrambled a militia response team. They took their positions, SMGs and assault rifles trained at the other end of the hallway and waited.

And waited.

The Caldari Navy marines never showed up.

So they went back to that docking bay in a much larger army intending to avenge the fallen salvagers. They went in with grenades in hand, expecting to be fired on by entrenched marines. Instead, they found a banged up docking bay, with only the Cormorant still docked. The Cormorant herself had holes cut into the hulls and was breaking apart. Titanium diborite plating peeling and superstructures poking out and all that. There was no sign of the dead salvagers.

If you wonder if they investigated, yes, they did. The Cormorant's computers were scrubbed. No sign of anyone else. It's generally accepted that this group of salvagers inhaled some weird gas and hallucinated and the missing salvagers had wandered off somewhere and got themselves lost.

Even now no sign of those two salvagers were found.