Jahn Rax - Space Archaeologist

Cold sleep, while dangerous, is time that doesn’t count against you. You’re in hibernation. Suspended animation. You go into cold sleep, and if you wake up a month later that month doesn’t count against the time the universe has allotted to you.

So when you are going on a mission for Outcomes Unlimited, coldsleep is a weirdly attractive option. Say you are going to have to make two jumps. That’s at least two weeks of your life, probably a bit more depending on the ship’s schedule, wasted sitting on a ship. I know I know - people study, they read, they exercise during that time. Still, it’s a lot of time spent on the job that you don’t get back. So assuming the cold berths are well-maintained, and that there’s a good medic on duty to wake you up at the end of the trip, and that you do in fact wake up, “travelling low” isn’t a horrible option.

At any rate, I’d like to thank the poor dead bastard we found in that last ship, who managed to hit the defrost button before the lunatics killed him.

Working for Outcomes Unlimited requires a certain level of comfort with not really knowing what you’re going to be doing until you get there to do it. Sometimes. You show up for a job, meet your team, get on a ship, and may end up in a cold berth hoping you’ll wake up again. I hate that. But that’s how it works. I figure there are worse ways to die. In fact I know there are worse ways, because we often get to see them up close.

A couple of weeks ago I was notified of a job. I can’t write a lot about it. Classified shit, right? Aww fuck it. If you are reading this I’m probably dead. Anyway, I’m told to show up at a local starport, on a planet I shall not name, to go to a job I never found out what it is. There’s a subsidized merchant starship there - a commercial ship. There are 8 or 10 passengers getting onboard when I got there. I met up with our team. Pretty typical OU types, except for one guy named Friedrich. He seemed like a bit of a dandy. Was carrying a rapier! No - really. A rapier named “Isolde”. I’ve learned already not to underestimate my fellow contractors. Friedrich turned out to be a solid guy.

So, we ended up in cold berths. Not my fave. I love sleeping. I also like awakening. Fingers crossed.

Time passes.

I wake up. That’s good! My colleagues all wake up! That’s also good. The ship’s red alert lights and klaxons are blasting. NOT GOOD. They are called klaxons, right?

Now look, we are professionals. So when we suddenly awaken from cold sleep, find the ship in an emergency situation, and then find the guy who probably pushed the “wake up” button dead, we - do - not - freak -out. Calm and cool. That’s us. That’s me.

Did I mention our weapons are all locked up in the ship’s locker and our other gear is all down on the cargo deck? And that all he have were the cold sleep jumpsuits they put us in? Yeah.

Some of the group starts the way up to the bridge to see what’s up. I ran over to the med lab, location of the closest computer terminal. I like computers. I’m good with them. One of the other guys takes the crew badge from the dead guy in there and I use it to log into the terminal. By that time we’ve gotten a couple of crew communicators, and the guys heading to the bridge had 1)encountered a lunatic dressed as a skeleton who attacked them and they knock him out, and 2)I have learned from the computer that the other passengers are cult members, who killed the crew, took over the bridge, pointed the ship into the sun, turned off the power to the maneuver drive, and are now chanting like lunatics in the cargo bay doing some kind of ritual. I locked the fanatics out of the system. They don’t like this, but they can eat my dookie.

Long story short…we survived. We got the engines working just in time to not become human sacrifices. We saved some crew members who were locked in a cargo container. I can neither confirm or deny that I over-rode the ship’s AI and flushed the lunatics out into space.

JR

My name is Jahn Rax. A lot of people pronounce it “Yon”, but in my family it’s just “John” but spelled pretentiously. I’m an archaeologist by training. As it turns out, archaeology school dropouts aren’t in high demand in the archaeology biz, and thus I’ve been forced to find other employment in this big, wide, dangerous Imperium. I work for a company called Outcomes Unlimited. They send me out with teams of other misfits and weirdos to solve problems no sane person with better options would even consider.

To look at me you might think I am ill-suited to this kind of work. You see, I’m what some would call a squirt. I stopped growing at 1.57 meters high, and I tip the scales at 45kg. I’m a skinny little dude with slighly below average dexterity, though I am actually pretty healthy.

What I didn’t get in the brawn department, however, went all into brains. I’m smart. After testing, they told me I’m smarter than about 98% of humans. So that’s pretty good, in case you’re not good with numbers. It’s smart enought to have gotten me through a lot of education. It’s also smart enough that once I’ve learned the basics of something I’m usually ready to move on to the next thing. For example, after completing some fairly basic computer training I found I was better with computers than, well, people who’ve spent years and years working with them. I’m also really good with modern achaeology tools, like drones and other remotes.

So while my pipsqueak body makes me appear to be an unlikely candidate for sort of a mercenary problem-solver, hey, I know my strengths and try to stick to them. In other words, when a fight breaks out I prefer not to be in it. I’d rather have a drone in it, while I sit at a comfortable console, miles away, with a cup of hot coffee and some comfy slippers on my feet. But I don’t always get what I’d want.

At any rate I thought I should document my activities with Outcomes Unlimited. There is a non-zero probability that I will go to the Big Dig in the Sky on one of these missions. Just how non-zero remains to be determined. Until then, well, whoever finds this journal on my tablet, just enjoy the tales…

JR