Challenge #02172-E343: One Notorious Encounter at Midnight
Vorax raiding parties had enough trouble with ships containing only one human, imagine the response to encountering a ship with a full crew of them... -- Amberfox
The ship was dark and silent. After numerous excursions in which the Vorax had encountered Humans, they felt that -perhaps- attacking a ship in its dormancy period might rally the spirits of the crew. Certainly, it lacked a little honour, but the Humans were next to relentless and this area of space was loaded with them.
One raid with a victory at the end, no matter how craven, would lift their confidence and give them the strength they needed to find more honourable -and vulnerable- prey. This ship looked perfect for the role. Large, and full of cargo. Loaded with life forms. There would be plenty of blood tonight.
Most of the ship was sleeping, so they employed cunning to silently enter the enemy hull. Once they were inside and had killed a few of the crew, then a glorious battle could commence and all would be proper for the raid. That was the plan. It was a good plan. They all agreed that it was a good plan.
Until the Humans turned up.
They didn't exactly turn up out of nowhere and guns blazing. They were there the whole time. Until this raid, the Vorax assumed that Humans were sparse in the Edge territories, since there was only one Human per ship. That assumption was very, very wrong.
Humans were plentiful.
This ship was overloaded with them.
Well. Not overloaded, overloaded. For a species who had had too many troubles with merely one Human. Encountering a vessel with ten or more[1] Humans within it was too much for the raiding party. They left as silently as they came, not wanting the multiple trouble that Humans definitely meant.
This was the origin of the Vorax phrase, "Any Human encounter you can walk away from is a good one."
[1] The actual crew count of the SS Notorious was twenty-five.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / TsuneoMP]
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So in this particular case the crew woke up and wondered what the hell happened to their hull or was the idea shelved before it was even executed? XD
Also dormancy period, everyone is asleep, not even a skeleton night shift crew to make sure things stay okay?
There was a skeleton crew, but they were busy laughing while they waited for the Vorax to catch on.