Some odd ship in distress.

Elias could see some white and silvery shape, too smooth to really be functional. The ship was still under power and didn't seem to have lost atmosphere despite the huge blackened gash on its side. Thought it wasn't broadcasting any distress signal, either through radio waves or hypercom. Upon closer examination he could make out the damaged symbol of a biten Old Earth fruit on the hull.

Intochis!

"Not these weirdos! Just my luck. I had to get the ship where even if they are already all dead I can't use anything to repair my ship, I won't find parts to repair this one and it'll be a bitch to sell.

"Vera, open coms!" he said, he looked down at his naked body and quickly added "voice only on my end."

"Unidentified ship, this is Captain Finley from the independent ship Patchwork, are you in need of assistance?" it was a rule amongst spacers, you had to offer assistance to ships in distress. Sure you could bill them for the help afterwards, but you offered help. Besides, you needed to prove that you did to have a valid salvage claim and didn't cost anything.

He couldn't reach their hypercom and the light speed coms would take a few minutes to reach and their reply to come back. He set the ship on an intercept course and went back to his cabin to find some presentable clothes.

Some cleanish underwear was acquired and he picked one of the half dozen second hand jumpsuits (all from different companies, he picked a blue one from a repair company that probably went under before his birth for today), he finished by putting a pair of heavy duty magboots.

"Patchwork this is Tim Sculley of the Wozniak, we require no assistance, we already sent a support ticket. We are merely waiting for the reply." came from the speakers of the ship, they had replied in audio only too.

While some groups had carved out empires in the galaxy, this cult from Old Earth had settled on a single planet first, Intosh, after that they didn't expand in a cohesive way but formed isolated enclaves of a single planet or system peppered around the various colonized areas. They lived in a quasi self sustaining way on worlds where only their proprietary tech was allowed and it was made by design to be incompatible with standard tech.

"Hmm, dude, you know you're not broadcasting or receiving in hypercom, right? And your distress beacon is off. I could give it a look, maybe try a quick fix," he offered. This wasn't going to be salvage, but he could try to get some cash for a repair or a tow.

He was closer now, the lag from the distance was only a few seconds.

" I'm afraid I can't let you intervene on our ship as youare not an authorized service provider." The guy on the other side was really dense or completely brainwashed. He was stranded on a small ship, in an unoccupied system, with no FTL coms and was following his rule book rather than trying to save his hide. Maybe there was still something to try to get some gains from the situation.

"I tell you what, from the looks of it you don't have an engineer on board, or you would at least know what doesn't work. I come aboard, check what is broken and then I either lend you my coms as a relay for your ticket or tow you to the nearest space station for a reasonable fee. I won't try to fix stuff if you don't want to, but you at least need good info before calling for help, that damage on the side of your ship doesn't look good. The other option is to do nothing and well , you'll die. Pretty much no one goes around here, that's why I was trying my chance there," he explained.

"Under those terms, we accept! You can enter through the airlock, I temporarily authorized you."

Of course... The universal docking tube, designed to match pretty much any ship on the known space ( even xeno races using other systems kept at least one hatch that was compatible with it), wouldn't match that of the Wozniak.

Elias went to put on his EVA-suit and grabbed his tool belt. Thinking about the cooky people he would have to deal with he slipped a compact magpistol into one of the pouches on the belt.

As he jumped out of his airlock towards the other ship he wondered what he would find inside. The dude said we in his last message. Who was aboard? What were they doing there? And what damaged their ship?