A Nymph In Distress

[Byron]

Prelude

The day had actually begun to become one of the better one's for Elena, relatively speaking. The hangover she had had in the morning she had fought against with a tremendous number of cups of hot, black coffee. This was the logical downside of alcohol consumption, on one hand she managed to have a somewhat better time with the booze pumping through her veins, but the drawback inevitably came the morning after, always. Refraining from the Vodka she had learnt to love again over the past couple of weeks however was no option, though. If she couldn't have her booze, it was about time for her hop into grave anyways, she believed. Or at least that's what she felt like when she had none of it around her.

However, with hours and hours passing, Elena would come closer and closer to yet another punch in her face. After losing her treasure and getting lured into a bloody trap to be observed, deep down she was hoping that that was it, and that now could finally come the time to get back on her feet. Somehow. Not that it would be an easy task, but with the heartening words of Edith Toller yesterday evening, she slightly believed again that one day she could get over all this, that one day she could put all the misery behind her finally and look ahead into the future. Even though it seemed so unrealistic at the current moment. What she was not aware of however was that she was about to slip into another crisis that had the potential of KOing her once more.

The scavenger hunt had begun when a random Junker around Manhattan's orbit had told Nick and Elena about a wreckage of a freighter he had found far off inhabitated space, its transponder answering to the name of "Nymph". It had not been hard for them to guess that this finding was probably related to the sudden disappearance of one of her Knights, Kiara Garlow, who also happened to be one of Elena's closest friends. It had been during the aftermaths of Elena's hospital stay that Kiara had comdemned her for her sudden alcohol consumption and run away out of paramount frustration. Since then, she had not been able to be located again, which alone had nagged at Elena, especially since she had been the one to frighten off Kiara inadvertently.

Now, with the hint where her former ship, the Sea Nymph, was located - inside the vast nebulae of Tau-37 - Elena had begun hoping that they could find her friend again. Setting out for Tau-37, a system that could conjure up old memories of hers which she would have liked not to think about any more, she would make her way through Liberty, Bretonia, the Independent Worlds and the Taus until finally reaching her destination. The journey had felt like an unbearable eternity, as Elena was deeply afraid they might had been fooled by the Junker they had met, or of finding something she didn't wish to find.

Upon approaching the wreckage of the ship - for once, Junkers had not lied, it really had been there -, it would however soon become apparent something bad must have happened. Drifting in space without any direction, if anything, it made a completely dead impression to her. According to the scans of Elena's Sabre, energy on the Nymph was down to zero percent, and the worst of all, there wasn't any hint of life signs on board the vessel. Oh God, she thought as her mind went blank for a moment, stuttering an incoherent mess of words, not knowing what to do. Already did she begin picturing a bunch of horror scenarios for herself, but she managed to suppress them as this situation seemed to be an urgent one.

Headlongly she speeded back to Liberty, planning to brush the dust of her gunboat off as it evidently needed heavier machinery to tow the freighter back into inhabited space, somewhere where it could be inspected with a closer look. Drumming up two others who would perform escort task during this rescue mission, one of which was her fellow Knight and friend Mason Coleman, she would speedily return to the wreckage site, and in two shakes of a dog's tail were they on the way back to Barrier Gate Station, Coronado, with the Sea Nymph in tow.

Claiming to get the inspections done on Barrier Gate Station, Mason and Elena dismissed their fellow escort, a 5th pilot called Nazawo Ayato who had happened to be off-duty at that time. Soon after his departure, they instead went straight for their original location where they planned to take a closer look at the wreckage: Glendalough Orbital, the Forlorn Hope's Headquarters between the moons Socorro and Oirabi.