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The Illusion of Choice
🕑 Added 2021-12-20 19:41:48 +0000 UTCWhile many, if not most of the trade hubs, refuelling depots and long range space stations dotted around the various empires provide profit enough to attract regular visitors both civilian and military, not all placed space structures are as lucky.
Many fall into disrepair, suffer critical damage or trade simply moves to more profitable routes, assuming such routes even existed at all. While they can be de-constructed for their vital components, the effort of recycling the main parts of their hulls are usually simply not worth the expenditure, leaving them to drift in silence where they once tried to be vibrant centres for sapience.
These stations can often be left for years, decades or centuries, becoming occasional lairs and homes to those in the fringes, and frequently accumulate value not for their intended purpose, but for the technology, riches and curiosities that have lived and raided these derelicts long after their abandonment. Some may even be re-used legitimately later on, slowly reclaimed from disuse deck by deck over the years.
However, there is another fate for large space structures between these success and failure. The backwater stations. Few visit for legitimate trade, refuelling or visitation, but they somehow cling on to life, or even come to some semblance of prosperity.
Able to maintain themselves from money raised by those that decide to remain after all the smart uniforms and sleek ships leave, such stations can be rough and ready, or cling onto some sort of civil order. They are rarely safe, but they can be consider rich in diversity.. for better or for worse.
All sorts of people can be found in these places, living there for all sorts of reasons. Security is rarely the clean uniformed officers that are well trained in the art of de-escalating problems and usage of non-lethal techniques. Often the closest one can find to official safety officers is a small Mercenary Detachment sent to resolve problems or enact intent, with the threat of usage acting as security for those on board.
As one can imagine, life on such structures can be notably less valuable then the more propitious stations and superstructures, especially for the less illicit societies that may be on board.
People go missing, and it can oft be difficult to work out if such missing were simply meeting their end of a bad deal with rivals, had an accident in the abandoned sections, or found a way to sneak themselves off station... especially problematic for those owning crew via bonded service.
Even more difficult is the one thing a large space station has close to a natural process, internal space usage. The less income a large station has, the less it's vast structure is maintained and used. This can be a determined effort to use only more vital areas and abandon the parts of the station too expensive to maintain in working order to preserve them for future use against wear and tear. Usually, however, the abandonment of sections is a reactive measure from neglect then proactive to prevent thus.
Even abandoned and unsafe for habitation, such areas need maintenance. The last thing an engine core team would want is an infestation of Fengus skittering around their energy production haphazardly, or distracting the workers with their needy ways. Sending smaller crew into such areas is usually the best course: Their paws can reach the smaller components and generally species such as Mice, Rats, Rabbits, Springhares and the like can treat the abandoned areas like burrows, warrens and nests, sneaking through the infrastructure to get past sealed sections and reach troublesome parts within the workings.
The tricky aspect through is when the occasional tech sent in to check parts, or provide repair, go missing. It usually happens through either incompetence or maliciousness,though many of the old stations claim such issues on tech and vanishings may be due to the abandoned section of the station being haunted. Ghost lights, movement at the corner of the eyes, whispers all around, and then a missing person or two. Those in space may still be superstitious, claiming sections of a station may be haunted, or even cursed. Naturally, no station master worth their salt would want to hear such claims against their livelihood.
How does a station master react to this? Is the cause of such vanishing, hauntings and cursed natures caused by biological, hostile entities, mechanical accident, radiological or simply carbon monoxide leaks? Typically a Mercenary Detachment is sent in to see what they can find, taking some detectors for hazards, a respirator for environment issues, and a few rifles to cuddle like a bullet-filled security blanket. Sensor ghosts skittering in the works might easily be found to be em leaks and dusty vents, communication dead spots can quickly be deduced to be small interference pulsing from ageing components, and the odd movement at the corner of the eye might be the expected carbon monoxide leak, or when seen with a respirator on, possibly infra-sound interacting with the eyeballs themselves. Tatters of clothing might be just remains from the abandoned wash room nearby, drifting on the recycled air.
When such teams return with no hazards, no bodies and no aggressors, the answer is easy to deduce: Whoever was sent down there must have simply found an escape from the station itself. Possibly an old shuttle or craft some pirate or criminal parked/built down there to escape in. That, or they were picked up by arrangement mid-job to escape without a debtor being all the wiser. It's an easy assumption, and with every answer, the myth of superstitious hauntings and cursed station sections can be officially dismissed.
The trouble is when the whispers of such beliefs remain, the occasional missing folk continue, and reports of stations receiving outgoing ships also seemly becoming cursed. Best for such a station master to suppress such talk along with the station masters newly affected, and everyone can simply assume the problem is either dealt with, or it is something they will just live with.
That assumption, however, may very well be the worst one to make...
