John led the way and it didn’t take long to find the first corpse. A Federation marine had been shot in a brief fire-fight in the adjacent corridor. They stepped carefully over the body and headed further into the ship.


    The corvette interior wasn’trge, consisting of a dozen rooms or so and it only took them 10 minutes to finish the sweep of the ship. They found 15 more dead crewmen and evidence of looting in most rooms. It looked like the crew had been caught by surprise and most of them had been killed during a hostile boarding action.


    The only really interesting find was the ship’s armoury. This room was sealed behind robust locked doors, which were scarred with the evidence of a number of attempts to st them open. John hooked up the chrome device again and after a few moments of contented humming, the doors swung open smoothly. Alyssa looked on with a raised eyebrow as he uncoupled the device from the opened portal.


    “It’s legit, I promise!” John whispered defensively, before leading them in to the armoury and locking the door behind them.


    A quick nce through the contents provided some interesting results. They found a number of suits of standard issue Federation body armour, which the crew had not had time to equip. John searched through the suits until he found one in the right size and had Alyssa don the protective gear. He also found some grenades which he carefully loaded on hisbat webbing.


    They left the armoury and headed to the cockpit. John was looking for the ship’s roster and was also interested in finding some more clues as to what had happened, hoping that the answers might be found in the Captain’s log. Unfortunately the cockpit had been badly damaged in a fire-fight, the grenade that killed the Captain and the pilot had also ripped through themand console, rendering it a broken charred wreck.


    They backtracked to the ship’s medical bay, Alyssa following closely behind him. “Why are we going to medical?” She asked curiously.


    John had stopped at one of theputers in the medical bay and was tapping away at the keyboard. “Well if I’m lucky…. Yes! I’ve found the crew’s medical logs. This will give us a list of actively serving crew members”.


    The personnel roster confirmed his fears. There were 18 serving crewmen aboard this Corvette, which meant that three were missing. Almost all the dead Federation crew they had found were men and after a quick scan of the crew listings, the missing crew were all women.


    John turned to his youngpanion. “It looks like they took three women as prisoners” He confirmed, with a grim look on his face. “I’ve seen what happens in these kind of scenarios before and it isn’t pretty. Are you up for mounting a rescue operation?”


    Alyssa looked up at him with wide eyes and she nodded her head vigorously.


    “This could get very dangerous, so follow all my instructions to the letter” he ordered.


    The young girl threw him a quick salute, her face set in a determined expression.Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.


    “Ok then, let’s move out” he instructed. “Stay behind me and cover our backs. If you see anyone, try and let me know before you start shooting”


    They left the medical bay and moved quickly and quietly to the airlock on the other side of the Corvette, the one that was connected to the Freighter. The connecting doors had been left unsealed, leaving the way into the grubby interior of the other ship yawning wide open. The battered Freighter was in a terrible state of disrepair, with wall panels discarded on the floor and exposed power cables showing evidence of crude patching efforts. The corridors were filthy, which made John’s lip curl with disgust.


    He moved forward, carefully checking each intersection as they moved further inwards. This Freighter was old and battered, but it was also big and it would be easy to get lost in here. He motioned Alyssa to hug the wall a moment and the two crouched in the shadows. He tapped at theputer built into the vambrace on his left arm and a schematic of this model of freighter popped up on the screen. With a few more clicks he marked their current position and the route they would need to follow to leave. John nodded to his youngpanion and they set off again.


    They had still not encountered anybody and John was beginning to wonder where everyone was, when he began to hear the sounds of some kind ofmotion up ahead. They moved closer, listening to the sounds of many raised voices shouting raucously. John turned a corner and saw that the corridor to his right opened out to the top level of some kind of cargo bay. He could see dozens of dark figures on the overhead gantries, leaning over railings to look at some scene below. These men were clearly pirates and the baying mob were drinking booze andughing at the evening’s entertainment.


    John held his hand palm upright to Alyssa indicating for her to stay right there, before he turned and crept closer to the cargo bay. As he approached the entrance to the room, he was eventually able to see through the transparent gantry floor. The dim flickering from the overhead lights illuminated a hellish scene below.


    John could see two broken and vited corpses on the cargo bay floor, while a brutish hulk of a creature lurched around, it’s back to him. He watched for a moment as the hulking shape moved to the side and a much smaller figure came into his view. The figure was a woman, clearly terrified, as she desperately tried to ward off the threatening creature with a short metal pole she was using as a makeshift spear.


    The Largath, for thats what it was, was slobberingsciviously while circling the missing crewwoman. Its rippling muscles flexed in its shoulders as it reared backwards and roared, cheered on by the pirates watching from above. The roar revealed that the creature was naked, a burgeoning, bright red, two foot long cock jutted out angrily from its groin, clearly intended for the unfortunate victim it was trying to corner.