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| - The Challenger was in orbit only minutes until coordinates were acquired from the pirates, sending us deeper into unknown space. The mEn'dai spoke of answering to higher powers and refused to give any more information but where we were going. The crew became greatly unnerved upon reaching our destination, a veritable interstellar dead-zone. One great red star bordered on supernova, dragging its planets slowly but surely towards itself. None of the planets had any signs of life: they had all been incinerated when the planets' orbits suddenly shifted as they were dragged towards the dying star. Spatial anomalies made communication out of the system almost impossible. Captain Hatcher went to the Brig to interrogate the mEn'dai further, but they had all ingested poison and killed themselves. But not all of them were accounted for. An unauthorized out-bound transmission was then detected coming from somewhere within the air-ducts. Too late, Hatcher learned that they had been sent into a trap. Hatcher knows that someone...or something...will surely be after them, so he orders the ship into the orbit of the farthest planet of the system. This planet, the farthest from their dying star, was only beginning to experience the affects of planetary meltdown on its decaying orbit towards its dying star. But solar flares had shattered the planet, sending massive amounts of debris into space, which became locked in orbit around the planet as pseudo-asteroids. The atmosphere is 41°Celsius, barely able to sustain human life, but adequate for Saori officer Evos. Hatcher assembles an away team, in EV-suits, and taking Evos with him, they beam down onto the planet while the Challenger waits in the asteroids. Once on the planet, Hatcher orders the away team to search for a life-sign they had detected on the planet. T'kol finds the ruins of a city, long-abandoned and in decay as the structures begin to dry and catch fire. After some scanning, they find a white humanoid body laying on the ground. Upon approach, they discover that it is completely androgynous, and still living. To their surprise, after restoring the creature's consciousness, they discover that it speaks English quite well. It introduces itself as Idis Kattan of the Shari, and asks them for their help in freeing his "brothers" from the death-camps. Hatcher asks it what the "death-camps" are, and Kattan says its a large place where hundreds of aliens are devoured in great furnaces. Hatcher thinks this might be the meat-grinders used by the mEn'dai, and asks Idis Kattan to take them there. He tells them that no one can "get" there since it is underground, and they were not walked into the facility. Just then, a meteor-shower destroys part of the city. One of the meteors, however, is actually a ship. When it lands, more mEn'dai break free. Hatcher attacks them and takes one of them prisoner. T'kol examines it and says that this one is genetically enhanced, like the ones they had captured before, with a poison sac that can be activated in order to kill them if caught. Hatcher interrogates the mEn'dai, ordering it to tell them where their processing facility is located. It says that its in the mountains, and further says that all of their Starfleet technology can't stop it from going up in flames with the rest of the planet. Hatcher asks what it is that will happen, but the mEn'dai kills itself. The last of the pirate ships disappear into the apocalyptic skylines of the planet as Hatcher arrives to liberate the prisoners. Almost too late, they discover that the pirates have rigged the facility's warp generator to overload, which will cause the underground facility to cave in, burying them, the victims and any evidence of the facility. The away team just barely gets the prisoners out in time as the facility is incinerated by the overload, although Hatcher's left arm is severely burned everyone survives to make it back to the Challenger. Upon returning the Challenger immediately returns into the asteroids, averting the pirate vessels fleeing the planet. While in the processing facility, T'kol discovered plans and data files the mEn'dai had left in their hurried escape. The Challenger goes deeper into the dying system into the orbit of a abandoned space station enveloped in a field of debris and derelict ships: kept from destruction by a heavy heat-shield. The Challenger is then hailed by a massive battleship that appears from out of warp nearby them, the ship is marked with unknown insignia with all its shields down. To be continued...
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)