**Full System Alert! Full System Alert!**
This is a Warden Corps All-Frequencies Broadcast. The Warden Corps is seeking the following fugitives currently believed to be in-game:
Player name: Kaiden
Player name: Zelda
Player name: Titus
Player name: Thorne
A bounty of 1,000,000 credits will be awarded to any player who provides information leading to the fugitives’ capture. An additional bounty of 500,000 credits will be awarded to any player who engages or delays the fugitives until a warden is able to Shackle them.
He’d been keeping track of the broadcasts with something approaching morbid fascination. The Corps had been steadily raising the bounty with each day that passed. How long until we’re worth ten million credits? One hundred million?
“The corvette was just a drop in the bucket,” Thorne said, appearing from the turret she’d been manning and joining Kaiden on the way back to the front of the ship. “If anything, it just pissed Moran off because they were close to having us and failed.” She frowned a moment as if thinking an unpleasant thought. “He’s gonna squeeze this game as tight as he can to stop us. He might not know what we’re doing, but he’ll know he needs to stop it. He’s not going to just assume we’re lying low and waiting for everything to blow over.”
“All the more reason to be here, then,” Zelda said.
Kaiden peered out a window as he passed, then nodded. The station wasn’t listed in this system’s list of registered facilities, but Thorne had assured them it was here and, considering they were on approach to it now, she’d been right.
Their scans had been unable to pick it up, and now that they were closer, Kaiden could see why. The station was thoroughly shielded. There were no landing lights visible from a distance; all the windows had been painted over to hide them, and likely the body of the station itself was entirely covered in signal-suppressing metals. Enough to hide the electromagnetic signal of their core and any excess heat it was venting.
Considering the system was officially listed as empty, there was no reason for players to come here. Nova’s AI considered empty space boring, though, and in pursuit of engaging gameplay it tended to fill it with random pirate spawns. Kaiden had made sure everyone always had one of the general “pirate purging” quests active so they’d all been able to keep themselves occupied and grinding as they navigated through the allegedly empty space. Combined with the quests they’d been picking up from every station they stopped at to refuel, it’d made for an effective and consistent amount of grinding. And, considering this was the closest place to pick up the transponder they were after, it was kind of on the way.
“You’re sure this transponder’s going to work?” Kaiden asked, looking to Thorne who was walking in step beside him.
“Trust me, the amount of time I’ve spent trying to catch players using one of these things is absurd. We’d ID the criminals’ ship and go after them. Next thing you know, their transponder code has changed and they show up on scans as a completely different ship. All for the cost of a hundred thousand credits. It’s honestly ridiculous. We’ve been telling NextGen these things are OP for years now, but they won’t nerf the transponders. Probably just to annoy the Corps.” She chuckled. “Seems like that’s gonna work to our advantage now.”
“Captains?” Acton said through comms. “We’ve hailed the station for landing clearance but there’s no response.”
“This place is hardly civilized enough to require landing clearance,” Thorne said with a laugh. “Just pick an open pad and take us in.”
Location discovered: Blue Hex Station
Faction Alignment: None
Achievement Unlocked!
Finding the Unfindable - 300 EXP!
The legendary Blue Hex Station is a myth, of course. It certainly doesn’t exist. But if it did, and if you found it, you’d get an achievement for doing so.
Kaiden dismissed the achievement with a slight smile as they stepped off the Veritas II, then frowned as something else caught his attention.
“Uh, should we be worried about that? Or is flaming wreckage strewn across the landing pads just part of the aesthetic here?”
Thorne frowned at it for a moment, then shrugged.
“This is a PVP zone. You know how players can get sometimes. Probably just some bored kids rolled through here with nothing better to do.”
“Acton, keep an active watch and let us know the moment you see anything amiss,” Zelda said back to the ship through comms.
“Of course, Captain.”
“Well, welcome to Blue Hex, anyway,” Thorne said, stretching her arms out as they crossed the landing platform. Instead of a hangar, as larger, more traditional stations had, Blue Hex had only exterior landing pads. Arrows painted on them led to an airlock that would, presumably, lead them into the station.
“Nice place,” Kaiden said, careful to step around the burning debris of what had once been a shuttle.
“It can get... rowdy,” Thorne said. “But nothing we can’t handle at our current levels.”
“Any chance we can pick up some missions here? I’m a pathetically small amount of EXP away from thirty-five,” Titus said as they arrived in front of the airlock. Thorne waved her hand in front of it and it opened.
“The NPCs here will have missions. At least, I’ve heard they do. They would never speak to me when I visited previously. You know, me being a warden and all.”
That makes sense, Kaiden thought. Will they speak to her now that she’s a free warden? If not, our prestige with Nassau’s criminal underground might come in handy.
The answer quickly became irrelevant, though, as the airlock cycled, then opened. The NPCs at Blue Hex weren’t going to be speaking to anybody.
The lights inside the station were flickering, but even still, it was easy enough to see the space was littered with bodies.
Lark Helling
