Welcome to Clarke, Population: Mostly Dead (Pirates of Drinax)

Clarke loomed ahead like a bad decision with its own weather system. Through the viewport, the world turned slowly, wrapped in permanent overcast and a mood that suggested someone had left the grief setting on overnight.

Cathbad’s voice crept through the ship like mildew through a sermon. “Clarke. Once a garden world. Now an ossuary with delusions of bureaucracy. The dead outnumber the living by a generous margin and have better housing. You will be greeted by black stone, damp air, and clergy who believe time is best spent embalmed.”

A pause, then a little static flourish, as if he were adjusting his tone from ‘lecture’ to ‘eulogy’.

“The Psychopomps rule in the name of memory. They preserve the fallen in neat vertical coffins and pray for a Day of Healing that would, if achieved, render them unemployed. Progress is heresy. Laughter is discouraged. The weather is scheduled to be corpse-grey with occasional drizzle.

“Good stuff,” snarked Caitlin. “Come for the weather, stay for the permanent residency.”

As the Morrigan slid into low orbit, Morwen sent the landing request with the practiced ease of someone who’d rather be anywhere else.

The reply arrived wrapped in static and gravitas. “Ah. The Morrigan. Another echo in the ever-decaying chorus of stars. I am Keeper Malos, Watcher of Thresholds, and until the next unfortunate incident, your starport host.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. Maltz mouthed Watcher of what now?

“Permission to land is granted. Pad 17. Descend swiftly ere the cosmos reclaims you. Time here is measured more solemnly than elsewhere - but measured it is.”

Morwen opened her mouth, thought better of it. Caitlin leaned in toward the mic.

“We’re here on behalf of King Oleb of Drinax,” she said. “Tracking the pirates who turned your quarry into a fireworks display.”

A longer pause. Then: “King Oleb? How... enterprising. Perhaps memory does have its champions after all. Should misfortune strike mid-descent, be assured your remains will be catalogued with reverence. Welcome to Clarke.”

Morwen killed the comm and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Why did we agree to do this again?”

“Stacks of cash, remember?” replied Caitlin. “And I’d rather crash into a gas giant than work a desk job.”

“Still time,” said Cathbad. “The week is young. And the barometric pressure here is tragic. I may compose something.”

Rain thrummed against the hull. The landing pad emerged from a field of black monoliths, a bad omen with navigation lights. Pad 17 lit up in the middle of a tidy cluster of hexagonal landing areas, flanked on one side by warehouses and on the other by the looming geometry of the necrotemple.

The building was a black pyramid. Of course it was. Someone on Clarke had clearly looked at grief and decided it needed a shape.

“Do we need an offering?” Caitlin asked, watching the grim scenery. “Or do we just show up and radiate loss?”

“Customs forms, not entrails,” said Quinn. “Though I wouldn’t rule out both.”

Scarred-Snout loomed near the viewport. “I respect their commitment. And their symmetry.”

Maltz poked at a diagnostic that didn’t need poking. “The place smells like sanitised grief. I hate it. Also, I want to steal their landing array.”

The Morrigan touched down with a grumble of hydraulics. The airlock began to cycle open. At the edge of the pad stood a man who looked like he'd lost a smiling contest to a tombstone. He wore black robes, a ceremonial cryo-tank strapped to his back, and an expression that hovered between melancholy and customer service.

“Ah,” he said, voice solemn but with a theatrical lilt. “The ephemerals. Welcome to Clarke. I shall try to preserve your time as best I can. Some of it may even survive the journey.”

He gave a slight bow, palms pressed together in the universal gesture of regret.

“I am Keeper Malos. Administrator of the port. Guardian of the threshold. Host of last resort. Come, the dead are watching.”

Caitlin gave him a nod. “Grand. Lead on, McDuff.”

They followed him across the tarmac, past slabs of black stone that looked back with the faces of the preserved dead. Between the landing pads and the necrotemple, the air thickened with ritual and mild disapproval. The corridors inside were colder than the outside and somehow wetter.

Malos spoke softly as they walked, as though afraid to wake the dead. “The attack was swift. A Scout and a Trader. A hauler stayed in orbit. Our relic-quarry burned. The dead were denied their rites and the blessed carbon foam. Their essence lost. It is... unacceptable.”

His office sat within a side wing of the necrotemple, half shrine, half paperwork repository. He gestured them toward plain metal chairs. “Please. Sit. Or don’t. Nothing lasts.”

He tapped a screen, displaying the quarry site. Blast scars. Scorch marks. A warehouse rendered into modern art. 

“They took high-tech components. Sellable. Useful to cultures that still dream of progress.”

“Find them,” he snapped. “End them, if you must. They mock our rites. They steal more than lives. They unmake memory.”

Caitlin leaned in. “And this was all recent?”

“Yes. As recent as your heartbeat. As distant as your last good memory.”

“Very helpful. We’ll file that under ‘morbid poetry’. What else?”

Malos smiled faintly - it was the kind of smile you had to earn by losing everything. “The reward is half a million credits. If you succeed, glory and gratitude. If you fail, monoliths.”

Scarred-Snout growled thoughtfully. “Not a bad epitaph.”

Maltz whispered in Caitlin’s ear. “Ask if we can choose our slab in advance. I prefer the ones with a view.”

She ignored him. Just. Adjusted the strap on her gun holster, then looked back to Malos. “Right then. Let’s go find your raiders and make a few of them wish they’d stayed unemployed.”

Malos inclined his head, the faintest trace of approval flickering behind the ceremonial gloom. “Then fulfil your mandate, emissaries of Drinax. May your justice be clean, your mercy rare, and your report... detailed. Clarke will remember your actions.”

---

The air/raft slipped from the Morrigan’s dorsal hatch with a sigh and a judder, like it was already regretting the journey. Starships weren’t allowed near the relic-quarry - something about atmospheric stress and spiritual contamination - so this was the dignified option. Below, Clarke’s terrain scrolled by in desaturated misery - stubborn vegetation clinging to cracked roads, monoliths sprouting like mould across the hills.

Caitlin watched the ruined skyline draw nearer. “Charming place. You can practically taste the melancholy.”

Morwen adjusted the throttle. “That’s just the coolant leak.”

The ride was smooth, quiet, and just long enough to let everyone wonder why the hell they'd said yes to this job. Ahead, Hiewad City stretched like a funeral procession - towers gutted by ancient fire, shacks blooming in their shadows. The relic-quarry came into view beyond the outskirts, a sprawl of churned earth, melted gantries, and half a dozen neatly stacked carbon-foam monoliths.

Maltz peered out the window. “If this is what they call ‘sacred ground,’ I worry about what they do for casual Fridays.”

The air/raft thudded down with a soft hiss, fans whining into silence. Caitlin hopped out, boots crunching into scorched gravel, and looked around. “Well. Someone’s after making a holy show of the place.”

The relic-quarry was a ruin in three acts: blackened soil, a warehouse turned inside out, and carbon foam blocks stacked by the trucks like failed promises. Rain slicked everything with that greasy sort of wet only bureaucracies could invent.

Scarred-Snout inspected a scorch mark on a burnt-out truck. “Multiple firing angles. No restraint. Like cubs.”

Morwen tapped the sad remains of a digger robot. “This wasn’t a raid. This was a tantrum using pulse lasers.”

Quinn paused, eyes narrowing behind his glasses. One carbon slab wasn’t quite like the others. Just a shade brighter, as if it had secrets and no poker face.

He knelt, scanned it. Faint signals. Fainter rhythm. Life, clinging on through sheer bloody-mindedness and an overpriced miracle material.

Caitlin leaned over his shoulder. “Well now. What have we here?”

“The woman inside is not quite dead. Just in stasis,” Quinn said. “If I start revival now, she might walk out. Or disintegrate. Either way, we could learn something.”

Scarred-Snout stepped forward, tail still, ears low. “You could wake her. But it would be a mistake.”

Quinn didn’t look up. “She’s alive.”

“Only just. Caught between endings. That’s a place we shouldn’t meddle.”

Maltz, from behind the digger robot, whispered, “Do we get a say, or is this an Aslan thing?”

“It’ll win us no favours with the Psychopomps,” Morwen noted. “They don’t seem big on resurrecting people.”

Caitlin frowned. “She might’ve seen the bastards who did this. Maybe even heard names.”

“And maybe pulling her out breaks whatever was keeping her whole. Maybe it dishonours what was meant to be her end.” Scarred-Snout’s gaze never left the slab. “You can do it. I’m saying you shouldn’t.”

Caitlin exhaled through her nose. “Right so. We’ll... take a moment.”

They stared at the slab. It offered no opinion.

--

Maltz emerged from the ruined warehouse, clutching a scorched radio casing. “Found something that still blinks. That counts as treasure, right?”

He dragged the busted comm to a drier patch and flipped it open with the reverence of a surgeon and the glee of a raccoon with power tools. His cybernetic arm whirred softly, fingers splitting into fine manipulators and a soldering tip with entirely too much confidence.

“This thing’s seen better days. And better wiring,” he muttered, jacking a lead into the arm’s data port.

Static crackled. A frown. “Hold on... they didn’t wipe the buffer. Amateurs.”

A few minutes and a creative bypass later, voices hissed through the speaker - chopped, scrambled, encrypted.

Caitlin crouched beside him. “So, what have we got? Pirate opera? Ransom karaoke?”

“Encrypted chatter. Tight-band stuff. Give me a second.”

Maltz’s claws danced. After a few moments and a muffled curse, the audio snapped into clarity.

A young male voice spoke, excited and breaking up. "...Ferrik to- <kzzzt> -Misery's... burn for the quar- <screech> -time to show the Lords..."

Heavy distortion drowned out words, then fragments emerged. "Krrsh, dammit, this ain't no- <pop> -song and dance... focus on the- <static wash> -you mutt..."

A vargr's voice wavered through, timid and fragmented. "...right, boss- <buzz> -crew's ready, we'll foll- <crackle> -your lead... Clarke won't even- <fade>"

A woman's voice cut through like a blade. "<hiss> -pull yourself together, Krrsh. this is no- <squeal> -listen to Ferrik, get those- <whine> -parts secure..."

The vargr responded quickly, his voice fading in and out. "...got it, Miria- <static> -we'll make sure... fetch a good price on Tor- <krzzak> -pol... landing now…"

Sounds of explosions, heavy weapons fire, screams. And then silence.

Maltz shut the unit with a quiet click. “Sounds like three ships. Commanded by Ferrik, Miria, and a Vargr called Krrsh. One stayed in orbit. The others made a mess.”

“Lovely,” said Caitlin. “Now we’ve got names. Let’s see if we can get their address and send them a sternly worded letter.”

She stood, brushing gravel off her cargo pants. “Well. I think that’s about all we’re getting out of this charming graveyard.”

One last glance at the wreckage, then a wistful sigh. “Torpol next. Sunshine, cocktails... maybe even another lesson from Torpedo Dave, if the stars align and I’ve been very, very good.”

Morwen frowned. “You’re not letting him teach you windsurfing again.”

Caitlin grinned. “Course not. This time I’m after the advanced course. Enlightenment via jet-ski.”