All the crew were safely in sound proof escape pods. The lights were now dimmed, the human was on the intercom. Time to go Haunted House on these ruffians!
Took Therapists months to stop the pirates from screaming in their sleep. -- Anon Guest
First up, I fully understand the charges of psychological damage in the second degree. In my defence... they did attack us.
As a Ship's Human, it's my job to keep the crew, the cargo, and the ship safe. In that priority. If I can't save anything else, I have to save as many of the crew as possible. I get bonuses for saving the entire kit and kaboodle. I get demerits for killing people, so you could say that I was sufficiently motivated to scare them off.
I admit, I overdid it. See, the problem with psychological warfare is that you never know how much is just enough and how much is over the top. My crew were safe in the lifepods, so now I had to stop the invaders from getting to the cargo.
It's a big ship, and the crew space is made for the comfort of a lot of people, so it was automatically liminal. And my hobby is practical effects so... yeah.
If they made one big mistake besides being pirates in an uncommon shipping lane? It was giving too much time between the stand and deliver order and actual boarding. That gives your Ship's Human all the time they need to set up whatever you like.
Another big mistake is boarding anywhere without your livesuit on. That's just rookie level dumb. If they'd worn their livesuits, or even a filter breather, they'd have never got a single dose of nitrous oxide. Let alone enough to fly them to the moon, so to speak.
Did you know that tweaking the atmospheric circulation system gives you drifts of mist or fog, depending on the nuance? I did. And I could rig it so that the mean temperature of the ship was reporting as optimal and uniform. Yet there were still cold spots and warm spots.
Then with the water vapour? It's flakking brilliant for doing Pepper's Ghost. There were already projection units everywhere, I could play brief visuals on the clouds whenever I wanted to.
Then there's the sub-sonic audio with occasional incidentals. Random speakers, playing randomly for most of it. Nothing gets the adrenoline pumping like a distant noise with no visible cause, happening somewhere you can't see. And I might have overdone it with the proximity-triggered ghosts.
I do know that my zombie livesuits pushed it over the edge. Helmetless livesuits with the servos programmed to walk them through random corridors and, if the sensors detected life in front of them, they'd raise their arms.
This is why my crew forbid me from doing Halloween, if we're being honest.
I'm too good at it.
[Photo by Stefan Lehner on Unsplash]
If you like my stories, please Check out my blog and Follow me. Or share them with your friends!
Send me a prompt [70 remaining prompts!]
