Alice has him, and the first question, of course, is obvious: “Do you go by Wudhagh Krilge with your men?”

  “Squad six, yes,” he speaks into the otherwise empty room; I can feel his puzzlement.

  “Did you order a hit on the people exiting the following dock…” Alice gives a reference for Ferdinand's docking bay.

  “I did, what…”

  Alice doesn't let him finish, “Why?”

  “Because a hundred grand is a lot of money and more than covers my men’s saries,” I feel a dawning realization coming over the link. Huh.

  “Who paid for it?”

  “User 8588046.” A kind of… grim satisfaction, now?

  Alice clearly picks up on it too, “Why are you feeling cocky?”

  “Because these kinds of spells are short range, and my suit monit…” he actually smiles as we all feel a brief searing pain through the link as his room detonates, rocking this section of the station in an explosion. The wind of the bst shakes us and knocks us sideways, and we hear air escaping from the station in an unholy howling. Good thing we were hundreds of feet away and around a wall.

  We survey the damage with our active Divination talents: The bst took out the ‘building’, the neighboring structures on either side, the neighbors across the street, left a hole to the station level below and above, and blew a gaping hole to space at the ‘back’.

  Station force fields spring to life and cover the hole as sirens wail. We spy several people outside the station, and I look at my fellows, “Rescue?” They all answer by Warping to different people… as do I.

  My first “target” is a woman who… pulls her hoody up, revealing that it's a face mask, gives me a thumbs up, casts a cantrip (Starwalk), and starts slowly flying to the station under her own magical power. I suppose it is on three of the four Starfinder caster lists… well, she's fine: Cantrips are at will, she can just cast that over and over until she's back at the station, not a problem. Even the cheapest armor can keep her breathing for a day, and she won't need it that long.

  So I Warp over to my second “target”, who already has the environmental protections on his low profile armor on, and… has a vacuum rappeler. He's already starting to pull himself in towards the station by the inckuded titanium cable. He chuckles at me. I can't hear him, but I can see his face.

  I look at the third person I had picked out, and spy that she's already on her way back using a jetpack installed in her armor. Thinking, I look carefully, and can't find a single person who actually needs rescuing. Between magic spells, cable lines with magnets, jetpacks, force soles, wings of light, and other options, everyone is covered. I guess this is pretty far from the first time there's been such an accident.

  Okay then.

  Chuckling to myself, I Warp back into the station, and meet back up with the party, “So… did anyone actually find someone to save?”

  “Not a one,” Alice shakes her head. “It seems people who live on a space station pn for trouble.”

  “To be fair, that's a good thing,” Charlene comments, “it means the only people to die from that little Charlie Foxtrot were those caught in the bst itself.”

  Brenna cringes, “Lots of folks still died.”

  “We couldn't have predicted that,” I shake my head, and add, “although… I do know of a time travel spell that might help.”

  “Hmm… no,” Alice shakes her head, “even if it works… how many people, do you think, would eventually die due to that idiot's actions? We shouldn't just undo it.” She takes a breath, “This isn't on us, he suicided in a way that killed others. We weren't even really pnning on killing him.”

  Brenna nods slowly and replies in our minds, “All right… that leaves us at a dead-end, however.”

  Heh, “Literally, even.” I chuckle, “well… let's go back to the ship for now… we can maybe summon his spirit, given that we met him, or just not worry about it until the next hit. Either way, we should probably figure out our next gig.”

  “Yeah…” Brenna shakes her head, “We've done enough for today.”

  We head back towards the ship, and find a small flying metal sphere covered in blue lights by the door.

  “Seeker message for Ferdinand,” it intones in a completely ft synthetic voice.

  The bot doesn't have a mind, so I mentally call for our game master, “Ferdinand?”

  He appears, “What can I do for you?”

  “The bot has a message for you,” Brenna telepathically tells him, “would you like to hear it?”

  He pauses, “How would anyone even know…” he then considers, “...ah, I gave you all my personal docking code. Huh. Well… I can't exactly present myself for the dump, so….”

  Charlene rolls her eyes, “We really just need your permission. A full sensory illusion, with you providing any pass codes, should do the job.”

  “A basic seeker bot won't ask for any, it's just going to scan for my biometrics.” He shrugs, “go for it, I'm curious who's trying to contact me, and you're going to need to hear it for me to hear it.”

  Alice does the casting, and produces a full sensory illusion of Ferdinand via the Spheres of Power Illusion sphere… touch, sound, sight, smell, and it will even register to thought, emotion, or life-based blindsense. “I'll have it mirror you,” she nods to Ferdinand.

  “This is Ferdinand. Please py the message,” our spectre speaks, and the illusion echos.

  The orb runs a low power ser beam over the illusion, and then proceeds to project a technological illusion of its own: A young woman with dirty blonde hair, a white blouse, jeans, purple eyes, and a bck leather jacket with metal shoulder spikes. She speaks in a melodious voice, “Hey Dad, I need a pickup. I know I was grounded, but I was… ah…” she purses her lips, “...visiting… my boyfriend, and checking out his family's old bunker when the bombs hit. But hey! It means I'm alive for you to scold me. So… win, yes?” She cringes, “anyway, the EMP from the bombs fried basically everything, and it took like a year for me to cobble enough working components and batteries together to get the family comm unit working… and at that I think I'm only getting the one transmission out if it… and I am dead tired of field rations. So… come pick me up? Please? I need,” the recording cuts off abruptly.

  “Message complete” the drone intones, reads off a transmission date, and flies off. Alice dismisses the illusion.

  “She's alive,” the debatably real man is clearly in shock, “my little girl is alive.”

  “Six months old, huh?” Charlene does the math, “That's not a great delivery time.”

  Ferdinand shrugs, "Seeker messages are slow but reliable."

  “And living off of field rations the whole time?” Alice shudders as she drops a thought in our heads, “I've never tried them, but those are described as unpleasant.”

  “Blocks of tasteless banced nutrition, yes…” I agree, “she wants a ride? We can probably do that. Do you know where she is?”

  “Yeah, I know where that rat lived... huh.” He pauses, “Okay, so, I always hated the kid, but I suppose he did save her life… ugh. At least I won't need to tell him that to his face.”

  “One of the few benefits of being dead, huh?” I chuckle. “Let's go in and plot a course.”

  “Before you do…” Ferdinand takes a breath, “be aware… it's pretty deep into Garret Garibaldi's territory.”

  “That's what the cloak is for,” Alice smiles, “we're all set up for a good fetch quest.”

  “I could go for a good stealthy sneak behind enemy lines,” Brenna smiles as she does her telepathic speech.

  “And we'd get a look at what we're up against,” I consider, “honestly, it sounds like a decent choice.”

  “So we're all in agreement,” Charlene chuckles. “We rescue the damsel. Come on.”

  “...thank you…”

  We board the ship, Alice and Ferdinand talk about the details, and Alice plots the course. We leave the docking bay, the doors opening and closing for us, the summons driving. We get for enough away from the station (and the surrounding impromptu fleet) for the jump, do the rainbow world for a bit, then we're in the Drift. The summons re-engage the cloak, power the engines back up, and we're off.

  The trip sts three weeks. I watch movies and old shows, spend “quality time” in my supposedly real body with Brenna, Alice, and Charlene (not all at once, yet), and eventually while having a bath alone in my room, something occurs to me.

  “Hey Ferdinand?”

  He appears as always, our ever-avaible ghost, “How can I…” he closes his eyes and takes a breath, “...How can I help you, David?”

  Oh, right: This body's oversized knockers are floating freely in the water. Eh, whatever, it's not like he's seeing ME. “Can I target you with spells?”

  “Ah… what?” The ghost seems a bit taken aback by that.

  I shrug, causing this body's chest to wave in the water, “Suppose I dropped a gmour on you directly. What would happen?”

  He pauses for a long while, “I don't know. I exist for the four of you, and your magic exists for everyone else.”

  I nod, “Any objections to trying it?”

  He shakes his head, “none at all. I welcome the attempt.”

  “Great!” I get out of the path, dripping water on the floor, and pull a personal comm unit out of warp storage. I take a “before” picture and… yep, empty room, the camera doesn't ‘see’ Ferdinand. I then use Spheres of Power's Illusion sphere to make a full sensory Gmour of Ferdinand on Ferdinand, and take another picture… then smile, and show it to our resident ghost.

  He blinks, “It can see me.”

  “Technically not,” I giggle, “it can't see you, but it can see the illusion yered over you.”

  “Well, that will be nice when we find my daughter.” He pauses, “That is, if…”

  I smile, “I can turn it back on for you then, no problem.”

  “Thank you,” he nods.

  Hmm… I will need to remember this when I get higher level spells… I think the Technomancy sphere had something for this at caster level ten. Oh, there's one other thing I should check. “Now then… what happens to the spell if you go back to the waiting room?”

  “How would I…” the ghost begins.

  I cut him off, though, because the answer is easily obtained, “That's enough for now,” and the game master vanishes.

  I wait a few seconds, and say, “Hey Ferdinand?”

  He appears again, and takes a breath, “What can I do for you, David?”

  I chuckle, “I'm just answering the question you didn't finish. Mind stepping aside?”

  He does, I take another picture, then frown, and show it to the ghost, “Sorry,” I shake my head.

  He looks at the image of an empty room, “It's fine. So I don't keep it when I'm dismissed. That's not too big of a deal.”

  Not for that, no, but I'm not going to tell him about my future pns yet, “Yeah… any of us can just renew it whenever.”

  “Thank you.” Ferdinand smiles… a genuine, honest smile, “I am looking forward to speaking with my daughter again.”

  I shrug, “No problem…” and then proceed to dry off and get dressed, including possessing a summon again.

  The trip is rgely uneventful; we end up going around a pnar bubble, a chunk of some insanely huge tower… but the inhabitants can't see us, so it's not a big deal. A constant cloak is HANDY.

  When the three week trip is up, I gather with the other party members on the bridge of the ship, and Alice gives us a rundown, “All right, now: We don't know exactly what to expect at our destination, so we're not popping into the material pne right there. Instead, we're appearing at a hopefully empty point elsewhere in the star system, so we can cloak, and go the rest of the way in realspace.”

  “The idea being to NOT get shot by any jumpy guardian ships that may be present at our destination,” Charlene nods, “works for me.”

  Alice gives the order, the summons obey, we have the rainbow py of light and the turned stomachs as the ship transitions, and then… we're looking at stars in bck. The summons re-engage the cloak, power the engines back up, and we're off again….