PART THE FIRST (Future parts will be PM'd, after you've PM'd me the correct answer to Part the first)
A familiar calm overcomes you as you materialize on the money ship. That is how you think of them: money. Not human, not Klingon, not Romulan, not even alive. Just money. That's how a pirate keeps his concentration. Killing them is just business. They used to be alive, then they crossed my path. Now they are just money.
This money had put up quite a fight. You'd almost laughed when you saw an armed freighter try to maneuver and blast away with everything it had. What on earth did it think it was doing? Then your humor had turned to anger when it's abnormally large phaser array -- and a drogue! What sort of a freighter carries a drogue! -- had actually managed to punch holes in your hull. Those were holes that were going to take good money, your money, to repair.
Then the humor had returned when the freighter tried to run. It dropped cargo. It turned off its shattered shields. It ran on emergency life support. In fact it did everything possible to get more speed except to turn off those rear firing phasers, and those it threw every spare part it had into keeping on-line. What was it doing? No merchant with a load of spice bound for Kartov Colony acted like this!
Even at the end, weapons destroyed and engines completely slagged, the money had refused to yield. It's radio remained silent, and scans showed barricades going up all over the interior. Your mind had raced. What can they be thinking? They already dumped the spice! Don't they know I can just rip open their hull, space the crew, and salvage whatever I want? What on earth could they be protecting?
It was that question which had made your final decision for you. Scans showed an unusually large number of armed personnel on the freighter, and an impressive collection of heavy infantry weaponry. Normally you would have done just what you'd thought of: simply cracked open their hull, spaced the lot of them, and then sifted through the bodies for any answers. Your crew wasn't that important to you, but they would cost time and money to replace. Why waste them if you didn't have to?
This time, however, things were different. What could they be protecting that is so important? There had been that taste in the back of your throat as you had pondered the question. It was a sweet, metallic taste you'd come to identify with treasure.
The calm passes as you finish materializing and the tremors take over. The tremors always take over when you expect a big haul. They don't signify fear, as many dead men have learned, but eagerness. You are like a dog on a leash about to be released for his dinner.
"Well, shiver me timbers!" you bellow humorously into the command channel, hearing the familiar hollow echo of your own voice inside your helmet. "I can't see a thing in this soup!" The money had been breathing crap for the last hour of the chase, running with emergency life support, and the heavy weapons fire since boarding had not improved the air quality any. A heavy smoke or fog -- or maybe both -- filled the interior. What had these weirdos really breathed anyway? You'd never bothered to check.
"Our marines were very efficient," answers your XO from just off your left elbow, leading your last group of marines. The man was always too forgiving.
"They were sloppy," you counter. "Too many of the bodies are ours."
Your XO nods, no doubt counting the loss of life and considering the affect it would have on the morale of the remaining crew. The man is an idiot. Good for the navy perhaps, but not for piracy. Doesn't he know that a hard fought victory with heavy casualties will boost morale, so long as they payoff is just as heavy? The survivors will spend and drink. They'll boast about dodging death. They'll feel invulnerable, and -- most importantly -- they'll want to come back for another cruise just on the promise of a share in the haul. No, the problem with the bodies is not the morale of this ship. The problem with the bodies is the cost and time you are going to have to spend in dock repairing them. Pirate never get rich spending time in dock.
"You take our squad port for mop-up duty," you tell the XO. It would be best to keep the idiot out of the way. "I'm headed aft."
"You're going alone, sir?"
"Aye, alone. This fight is over. The day I can't handle a few scattered merchants is the day I deserve to die."
Your XO nods briefly, and then leads the squad away quickly.
The cheeky bastard *wants* me to die! you realize with a start. The naive idiot things he's ready to run a ship! That was a ridiculous arrogance, especially when the ship in question was yours. Well, let the man plot and dream. He might need dealing with soon, but in the meantime he and the marines were useful in heading toward port, the empty cargo holds, and the last resistance. You have other ideas. You are headed for the captain's cabin. The resistance had been strongest here to begin with, and the captain had not yet been found among the bodies. If there was teasure to be found it would be found here.
It is a tense walk, heading aft alone. The "corridors" of a freighter are catwalks and ledges more often than not, and the scorched soup for air made finding your way difficult. At every corner and smokey patch could lurk some desperate holdout ready to run you through. Some mad fool, scared out of his wits, who thinks it would be a good idea to kill you. Could there be anyone that stupid?
Naturally, there is.
The sharpened steel pipe springs for you out of a patch of foggy soup, ripping open the front of your encounter suit as you barely manage to knock it aside in time to avoid being skewered. You keep your grip on it, pull the assailant to you, and place your pistol to his head. It's a human, with a burned face, runny nose and eyes, and showing years of dental neglect. Absurdly you think, Human. I guess the soup has oxygen in it.
"Where is your captain?" you hiss.
"Pour quoi faire?" he asks, not quite sanely. Your mind races for a translation and a suitable reply.
You settle for pressing the pistol more tightly to his temple and shouting simply, "El Capitaine!" You aren't sure that is right, but it seems to get through to him. He points to a distant door, and you let him collapse back into the patch of smokey fog. He coughs pitifully. The pistol kicks in your hand. It's almost a mercy to put the man out of his misery. You struggle to patch your own encounter suit (ignoring your unexpected blood within) as you walk to the cabin.
When the door opens you find two men -- one human and one....... not -- both curled up on the floor and apparently breathing their last. The human has both hands pressed against a gaping hole in his guts. The not has both hands pressed against a gaping hole in a large bottle of ancient Romulan ale. Both are crying. Neither are a threat.
"Well, Capitaine", you muse hopefully in intergalactic. "What were you guarding that was so important?"
"Wealth!" he wheezes. "I can make you rich!"
The taste returns in the back of your throat. The trembles double in intensity. This is what you wanted to hear!
"Money? Where is it? A secret hold? Tell me, and I'll get you a doctor."
The "capitaine" shakes his head, and you want to kick him. He then makes you happy again with his next answer. "No, better than money. The key to your dreams. Please! Water!"
What is better than money? "OK! OK!" you scream, as you fight to drag the broken bottle of ale from the alien who shriekss in dismay. You beat him over the head with your pistol to make him let go. "Here! It's better than water!" You dab the last few remaining drops from the bottle onto his lips. "I'll get you more! Just don't die. Don't die like that pig in the hall!"
"He knows ..... the details......" wheezes the captain, pointing to the alien, and then dies without further ado.
You turn to the alien, briefly grateful you didn't shoot him when he resisted giving up his broken bottle. "Wh-what did he mean?" you ask, the tremors beginning to affect your voice. "What details."
"Lothar, at the gap." states the alien in an obvious pout. "We wept for Shiaren."
"What? What about the money?"
"Lothar, at the gap," he repeats with some anger.
The alien makes no sense. Obviously you have to start hitting him. So you do. It feels so good you do it again when he screams something about "Beltar and Daiden on the sea." What sort of gibberish is this?
Your XO may not know the first thing about sniffing out which ships have a valuable treasure, but your seargent of marines clearly does. It is he who keeps you from beating the alien to death when it refused to make sense.
Hours later, you are bandaging your own limbs from where they repeatedly contacted the aliens rather hard head, and talking to your chief medical officer. Quite frankly, the man scares you. He's visited every dungeon you've ever passed and he always comes back with new blades and newly harvested body parts. "For research" he explains, but his ability to actually save crew members has never seemed to improve. For getting answers, however, he's excellent.
But not today.
"For sure, Your Honor, the beast knows something. But there is no power on earth that's going to make him talk."
"I thought you could make any creature talk?"
"Oh, and for sure that is true, You Honor. As me mother always used to say, 'You've got the gift of moving tongues, me boy.'" He gives an evil laugh. "She said that before I took hers out. But here it's no good, Your Worship. I can push him to the point where he'll give me his mother, that's for sure. He'd be dead if I didn't know how to regenerate a few limbs over and over. But in that state he's in such distress he only speaks in that nonsense he hurt your ears with before."
You pause and reflect. A man in the services of your doctor would do many things to get himself free. Perhaps, after a few days, he'd even fool himself into thinking the pirate who'd captured him was his friend.
"Perhaps we can buy him," you ponder out loud.
"Oh, and for sure, Your Honor, there is something he wants. I just haven't been able to figure out what it is yet."
END OF PART THE FIRST: The key to your fondest dreams of wealth seems to hang in front of you. Do you know how to make the alien talk? There is something you can do, in the game, that will get you the answers you need. Once you've done it, take a screen shot and PM it to me, and tell me how you will approach this problem. If you get it right, then I wil PM you the next part of the puzzle. If you get it wrong, the alien will probably spout more nonsense. He might even pout again.
-Herr Burt
Topic: Econ War: Treasure Island (Read 4119 times)