Session 1: Forward March

The crew of the Siren's Song were gathered on the bridge to receive a message from one of their main contacts on Redemption, Corey Thorn. Corey, often addressed by his nickname of Packrat, often threw missions their way, which kept the Siren's Song fueled, which kept her crew moving.

This time, Corey had news of a distress signal that had been received intermittently but which was too garbled, due to the frequent magnetic disturbances that had been plaguing the Marred Maelstrom for some time, to understand or pinpoint an exact location of its source. All Corey had for them to go on was that it was coming from somewhere near the outskirts of the local system, the Nimbus System, near the planetoid Ory. He told them it was an easy enough job, given it was just in-system, and that given the low risk the pay was pretty decent - though he did remind them of his usual finder's fee.

Setting a course for Ory, the Siren's Song quickly arrived at its destination. Sadly, Faye Jefferies had been on a bit of a bender lately so it was left to Ivan Popov to pilot the ship. Quinn Mital and Jayce Audric worked alongside Quinn on this mission while Callahan babysat Faye.

Upon arriving at Ory, the crew quickly started scanning the area with the ship's sensors. It wasn't long before they picked up a strange, intermittent signal of some kind. Not having anything to reference it against they decided it was best to assume it was related to their mission and they plotted a course. As they arrived at its source they discovered a vast boneyard of some kind of giant space-living, whale-like creatures. Jayce wanted to explore the boneyard more thoroughly in case some property of the densely packed, giant bones was blocking the signal at close range. Unfortunately, the similarities between hunting for this needle in a haystack to hunting for the source of his father's last transmission soon triggered Jayce and he became distracted as he muttered to himself. This in turn distracted Ivan, who managed to clip one of the giant skeletons with the Siren's Song, causing some minor damage to the hull as they left the immediate vicinity and began a standard search pattern.

Soon after the sensors picked up the signature of a large ship. Ivan set coordinates and brought the Siren's Song within visual distance. They quickly determined that this was a derelict of some kind as its large hanger doors were either open, or rent, or missing. Out of this gaping maw Jayce, Ivan, and Quinn could see that bodies had been sucked out into the vacuum of space. This far out on the edges of the system there wasn't much else in the way of mass and so the bodies had fallen into an orbit of sorts about the derelict ship. Noting the location as a possible salvage operation, the Siren's Song moved past and continued its search pattern.

Continuing the search, the Siren's Song eventually arrived in the vicinity of the planetoid, Anubis. There their sensors picked up a small fighter craft that sat stationary, but yet not in orbit around the planetoid despite being in a position where it should have been captured by the gravity well of Anubis. Initial scans showed that all systems were fully powered, and that there was a single life form on board, in the cockpit. Strangely, the scans also seemed to detect some kind of organic compound infused within the metal of the ship's hull. As the crew began to puzzle through this, their hailing channel crackled into life as someone on the other ship hailed them.

Exchanging introductions they learned that the pilot of the other ship was known as Eveline Ammar. She explained that she had been stuck here for quite some time; all systems green, but her ship unable to budge from its current position. She demanded once again that they help.

Quinn searched the cargo areas of the Siren's Song in hopes of finding some kind of a grappling hook and winch that could be used to tow the smaller ship into their vehicle bay - although it would be a tight fit. Just as they were finishing the preparations for this approach, there was a bling flash of white light, followed by a short period of pitch blackness as their eyes tried to readjust again. When they did, the other ship was gone; in its place a field of millions of tiny pieces of what had once been the material of the small fighter craft.

Jayce and Ivan began scouring sensor logs, trying to determine what had destroyed the other ship. They quickly went down a completely other rabbit hole, however, as they started to find that there were duplicate time stamps in the logs. In the same instant one entry showed the fighter present and the other showed the field of debris. There was no event or reading between the ship being there and then being destroyed.

The crew tried their best to understand what had happened. Quinn volunteered for an EVA in order to get a closer look and maybe collect some samples. However, almost immediately she became injured, though they could not quite tell what caused it. She was brought back on board and then shortly after another flash of blinding light occurred.

As their eyes were still adjusting the comms crackled alive again and they heard that same initial greeting once more.

"What the hell?" was the universal response from the crew. Eveline had no recollection of encountering them previously and it quickly became apparent that some kind of time anomaly or loop was playing out here. The crew of the Siren's Song shifted their focus away from rescuing Eveline and instead to learning what exactly was happening here; at least, they though, if they understood they might be in a better position to figure out how to help. However, as they were still trying to ascertain what was causing the time anomaly and how it worked, there was a third flash of light and now there was no other ship, no debris, no anything around them. Collectively, the crew had a bad feeling about this and they confirmed in multiple ways that time had stopped for their ship now. All new sensor readings had the same time stamp, Quinn's watch was not advancing, etc.

The crew was growing more and more desperate to solve this mystery and escape from it themselves. They decided to contain the remaining organic matter that had been collected by Quinn earlier from the debris field. However, as they began to probe it with sensors it seemed the energy was absorbed and causing the organic matter to multiply. They quickly stopped what they were doing and decided that maybe a full system reboot might result in kicking them out of the anomaly and back into their own timeline. Quinn went to the main switch for the ship's power core and pulled it. Everything went dark. Then everything went brilliantly bright again. Then dark again. Then, as their eyes adjusted once more they found that once more they could see the other ship and once more their comms came to life with Eveline's now familiar initial hail.

The crew continued to work against the, now unpredictable, clock to figure out what the hell was happening. They suggested to Eveline that she perform a full system reboot like they had done. However, when she did so the organic material on her ship began to emit a strong pulse of power and greenish-purple light. Before they could come to any conclusion as to what was happening, or how to save Eveline, there was another bright flash and once more the other ship was simply a debris field. The crew decided that the organic matter from the other ship's hull was somehow tied to the time anomaly and they immediately set to work jettisoning it from their air lock. Sadly, it immediately settled onto the hull of their own ship and the Siren's Song's hull integrity alarm sounded, indicating a minor loss of integrity.

Deciding enough was enough, Quinn suited up again for an EVA and collected a shovel from the cargo bay. Outside, she scraped all of the bits of organic matter off the hull and, using her augments, heaved the shovel into space. No longer in proximity to the organic matter, they found that their sensor logs had returned to normal - there were no signs of the previously duplicated timestamps. As well, the other ship stayed in its destroyed state now. It seemed that they have RESOLVED the time anomaly even if they had not SOLVED it.

Having nearly exhausted their supplies, taken significant damage to the integrity of the Siren's Song, and failed to rescue Eveline, they decided to return to Redemption, collect their reward for "finding the source of the distress signal", give Packrat a piece of their minds, and lick their wounds until they were ready for another job.