Jeff fixes his suit and we head over to the other ship to see if we can open the door. With the device that we found, the door does open and we are able to search the ship. We find basic survival gear, some space suits and ammunition. Jeff swaps out his damaged space suit for a new one, though the new one is not armored.

Jeff checks out the operation of this ship and it seems operable. He accesses the logs and finds that this was not the original ship that was sent to check on the security of the base. This ship intercepted a communique from the base concerning a monolith they found in the mine, destroyed the Wesley Corp. ship and docked here.

The monolith is holding up the cavern roof inside the mine, and has strange markings on it. We decide to head into the mine to investigate.

We enter the warehouse and see several crumpled corpses laying around. One of them is wearing a backpack with a hose attached to it. Toward the back of the room we see a black creature about twice as big as a person, partially frozen to the back wall. Katya immediately fires a grenade launcher at the beast, and it wounds him.

The beast breaks free of the ice and starts shambling towards us. The rest of us take shots at him as well. As he moves in closer, Katya draws her chainswords and rushes the creature.

As the creature is occupied, Thomas runs into the mine and examines the monolith. There is strange writing on here that is consistent with other weird languages that have popped up recently. As soon as he does so, however, the creature turns around from where it was standing and runs at top speed into the monolith, missing Thomas by inches and cracking the monolith. The room shakes and rocks start raining down on him. We can’t see him anymore behind all of the rubble.

Dr. Reilly checks the Engineering and Supply areas of the base and we don’t find anything else. We gather what information we had and head back to the hangar. We take the equipment out of our shuttle and put it into the other shuttle, then take off toward Puck. Katya gives Dr. Reilly some of the gross monster chunks from her chainswords as samples.

We return to base and are debriefed by Captain Dearborn. He says that we should get some rest because our next mission is imminent, and it will be our first outing with our new ship, a Knight Errant class Corvette. We will be traveling to Warden Prime, with orbits Earth. Before he leaves, Dr. Reilly gives the monster samples to the lab for analysis.

We board the ship and enter cryo-sleep for the long journey. After we come up out of our cryo couches, our readouts show that it is 7:32 PM Earth time, but we have woken up 2 weeks early. We hear the female synthesized computer telling us that the ship has received a distress call and has automatically slowed the ship and changed course to intercept. We will be there in 13 minutes.

We suit up and prepare to board the other ship, then head to the bridge. The distress signal is coming from a ship called the Mariner of the Stars. It is a space cruise ship. We check the scanners and we see that there is power and life support on board, but the vessel is drifting.

Communications are opened between us and we speak with Captain Andre Martel. He says that there was an accident and the engines have been knocked out.

We are greeted by a young woman who says that she is in charge of security. Dr. Reilly stifles a guffaw upon seeing her. She leads us to the promenade area with all of the shops where we see patrons who are trying to enjoy themselves.

We make it to the bridge and meet the captain. He says that their drives have been sabotaged. They sent their engineering officer Miyamoto to check on things and she later reported that their engineering Chief Hardy had been murdered — bludgeoned to death. Their security forces have been overwhelmed. We ask to see the body, and he agrees, and says that the amenities of the ship will be available to us while we are working the case.