The first adventure begins

And we're off. We had ourselfs a mission and a ship. That the ship came with the likes of Shamus Loaded, couldn't be helped. Fortunately there was Armand to keep the ship flying. With a bit of luck we would find the ship and bring it home to collect the 20.000 Birr
 
It was a good day's travel to the location where the ship was last seen. I used this time to do some Chai Chi exercises to clear my body and mind. The rest of the day I spend mainly on the bridge. Keeping an eye on Shamus. Officially he is the pilot but my confidence in his flying skills isn't great, to put it mildly. Besides he looked at Jezebel funny.
 
When we reached the place of de given coördinations, to our surprise we didn't find a spaceship, but a spacestation. Badly damaged and covered in a black growth of some sort. After some hesitation we decided to investigate the spacestation. We found a small airlock that seemed to be working. Shamus tried to dock it, but failed miserably. With more luck then skill, the second attempt was successful! We put our exo-suits on and entered the airlock not knowing what we were getting ourselves into.
 
Entering the spacestation through the airlock Armand scanned the place and gives us a thumbs up. We could safely proceed, so we put of our exo-helmets. When we moved forward we found ourselves surrounded by darkness. The only light was the light from our exo-helmets. Armand threw a glowing sugar globe into the blackness. While the sugar globe filled the the corridor with light, we saw that the whole corridor was covered with black garlands, roots, branches and foliage, overgrown with vacuum organisms! Armand and I looked at each-other. We never saw anything like this. Shamus wanted to eat some of it. Luckily we could stop him. Silly man. We walked through the dark corridor, Shamus hobbling behind us.

At the end of the corridor there was a promenade. Flickering light strips in the ceiling gave it an ominous glare. Looking for information, Armand found a door to an appartment. In the apartment I saw a small green light blinking. Yess we were in luck. A computer and it has power! Shamus was the only one with Data-Jinn magic so he could logon. In this computer we found information about the station and there was a map. We wanted to find the way up and we didn't want to stay on this station longer then necessary. We quickly continued our path on the promenade.
 
Then we stumbled on a sight that startled me. And for a moment my heart was stricken with grieve. There before us was the naked body of a dead child, face down on the floor, half melted into the ground. The child could be no older then five. Not much older then ...... His body was partly covered by a moss-like black carpet. Still with my mind somewhere else, I heard Shamus suddenly said: "Can I Kick it". What the fuck! Are there no brains in that mans head. "No" I said. "What we can do is examine this body." Gently we tried to turn the body, but its face staid stuck to the floor. Suddenly with a crack the body came loose from the head. The sound was horrifying. A chill ran down my spine.

Still tooking at the severed body, we heard Shamus squeaking. "I have the feeling we are being watched", he said trembling. "I also saw a strange shadow moving away." Not taking Shamus completely serious, we still decided to move forward. The whole scene in this station made us all feel very uneasy. Leaving the severed child where we found it.
 
We hoped that we would find an elevator. Armand and I were making our way to the end of a corridor where we saw some lights. Shamus, with his short legs, had trouble keeping up. When I turned around to push Shamus to walk a little bit faster, I saw him looking down, standing knee-high in a pile of bones. And not any bones, human bones, bones from little children. There was something terribly wrong here. With memory's haunting my mind, I wanted to leave this place as soon as possible. Shamus started running making te bones flying about. It was a gruesome sight.
 
Suddenly Shamus stood still. Het turned toward an air-shaft and walked toward it. Shhhtt he said: "I hear a voice, ands it's comming from that air-shaft". We joint him and looking into the air shaft we saw a man. He looked as if he hadn't had a bath in ages, long hair and smelling terribly. His hands were holding something, while he frantikly called out "Kiran" "Kiran". We asked who he was and what had happened. He said his name was Jihan Darim. We looked at each other suprised. He was the captain of the missing ship. Shamus, more interested in what the man was holding in his hand, asked him what it was. It turned out to be the talisman " Lady of Tears" . Bringing luck to the beholder for a year. Without any shame, Shamus asked if the man to give him the Talisman. The man said that he would give it to Shamus but than we had to take him with us. He looked very afraid and didn't want to be left behind. He said something about faceless children and that his whole crew was dead. We really couldn't make heads or tales from his story, but his fear looked genuine.

We took him with us as we walked back toward the elevator. Jihan told us that the elevator didn't work, but never underestimate the skill of Armand to fix things. He found out the elevator was sabotaged. Armand and Shamus tried to bypass whatever was blocking the control panel. The first attempted failed. When they started heir second attempt we heard noises. I stepped out of the elevator to look what was causing the noise. There I saw a dozen of faceless children. Their faces only had eyes. I startled. They where moving towards me. I shouted out to Armand for help.. The children didn't look angry or something. The were just observing me. One of the children moved closer. I took a step backwards. Armand tried to step between us with his Axe. This made the children look suspicious at him, but they didn't attack. They were just sitting there, looking at us. Shamus called Armand to helped him, so Armand stepped back into the elevator again. That was our way out so that had to be fixed. The child that had moved toward me, moved a little bit closer en tried to touch me. I stood with my back against the wall. Suddenly the child layed his hand flat on my upper leg. I froze a little. just at that moment, Armand pulled me into the elevator and pressed on the button for the Docks.
 
The elevator moved up, on our way to the floor where the dock was. But when the doors opened, we turned out to be on the upper floor "The Biodome". It turned out that the elevator could only move all he way up or all the way down. We couldn't make any stops in between. Jihan became very nervous and didn't want to enter The Biodome. But I told him there was no other option. So he could stay behind, alone, or he could come with us. Because he didn't want to stay behind alone, he followed us. We had to look for a way to get to the floor below us where the ship of Jihan was docked.

The biodome was like a jungle. Entirely overgrown. Hot, Humid and we heared animal sounds everywere. Armand used his Axe to cut through thick branches and foliage's as we were talking and Shamus and Jihan followed silently. Suddenly we saw a spider, a very strange one. This was a spider resembling a human hand: fingers, nails, everything. Very strange. Then a bird landed on Armand's houlder. This bird had wings looking like human skin and entirely made of human parts. We started moving more quickly. We didn't realized that we gradually moved uphill. Suddenly the ground became very slippery and before we realized what happened we all slided to the bottom of the hill further into the jungle. We got separated from each other. When I stopped I didn't see anyone. I only heard Shamus. He was standing on the other side of some sort of ravine. His fear of the jungle gave him extra strength and motivation to jump over the ravine. I never could have guest that those little legs had it in them to jump so far. Or was it the work of the Lady of Tears?. Now we had to find the rest.
To be continued !