To: Junker Marauders HC | From: The GMG|

[Gas Miners Guild]

Incoming transmission
… GMG Encryption …

Konnichiwa Marauders,


This message hails from the GMG Board of Executives. Your Organization has been chosen by the Board to perform a series of clean-up operations. Due to the sensitive matter concerning this whole affair, and with Guild Master Taro Katsuo's recommendations, we've chosen to contact your Organization in favor of others.

As for the current matter at hand:
A few days ago, Naha Control lost contact with one of our fuel convoys in Sigma-13. Our Paramilitary has since been patrolling the area they were believed lost in, and late last night they finally managed to clear some light on the issue. What they found were several escape pods originating from the Sarufutsu and the Shirutoru, the two Kujira class transports of the convoy. However, the escape pods had apparently been deactivated the moment they detached from their respective transport. With life-support and rescue beacons disabled in the pods, and the black-box recordings being wiped save for tiny pecks of information that we managed to piece together from them, none of the crew members inside were alive when we found the pods. We'd been looking for needles in a haystack, and it was only by pure chance that the pods were found at all.

Coincidentally, one of the escape pods had initially been faulty. We suspect that before the pod detached from its ship, the crew conducted maintenance on it and as a result, the connection to the ships mainframe had been partially severed. Because of this, the life-support had still been functional upon ejection, at least for a while. The unlucky crew member that escaped in this pod made the most of it before expiring when the life-support finally gave up. A slow and excruciating death.

Inside the pod, next to the deceased crew member, we found his personal data-pad. On it, the crew member detailed a series of events that led up to the crews attempted escape, and ultimate demise. His last thoughts had been with the Guild.

In short, the transports had apparently been hit with a sudden series of crashes, shocking their hulls and causing minor damages spread throughout both ships. What they first believed to be an attack, their scanners revealed no other ships in range of the convoy. After a few tense moments, the crew were lead to the conclusion that they had been struck by smaller parts of a wreckage hailing back to the Eighty, which is not entirely uncommon even today.
Shortly after this incident, auxiliary systems aboard both ships started to go haywire. With no apparent cause or explanation, the crews were helpless in their attempts to prevent their ships from turning off essential systems one after the other, and were soon forced to use the escape pods.
This, as we know, lead to their almost immediate deaths. The pods were deactivated the moment they were released, quickly killing those inside. The lone, albeit temporary survivor, mentioned in his final report that the ship's controls and systems were fully unresponsive to input, as if something had taken over complete control of the ships, systematically forcing the crew to escape, and killing them in the attempt.

This is where You come in, Marauders.

We're assigning this contract to your Organization, to locate and salvage the two Kujira transports, the Sarufutsu and the Shirutoru. We need Your expertise in this salvage operation and to find the source of the problem. We need to make sure that whatever happened to our ships, it cannot happen again elsewhere. Someone or something has found a critical flaw in our security systems aboard our Kujira models, and we mustn't let this spread any further, as the lives of our Guildsmen are at stake. We've already suffered losses to an unknown enemy, we shall not suffer them any more.

If you can help us finding the root of our problem and preventing it from happening again, we're willing to offer you a large sum of credits. However, as you are Junkers, instead of a monetary reward, we're willing to offer the hulls of the two Kujiras to you for salvage or reconditioning. Cash or scraps, that's our offer.

While we cannot guarantee that the Sarufutsu and the Shirutoru are harmless to either your men or their ships, our transports are weakly armed and armored and should present few dangers to you by themselves.
We're lead to believe that the pair of Kujiras are currently cruising around Sigma-13 aimlessly, avoiding contact with other ships and are unresponsive to radio contact. You'll have to track them down and disable them, to have any chance of salvaging them.

We trust Your discretion in handling the matter, and we're anxious to hear from your Organization again.


We wish you good hunting.

sore dewa,
The Board, Gas Miners Guild
End of transmission

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