Sending my people over to die won’t help the slaves or my mission. My crew is remarkably adept at piloting the Kestrel, but none of us has any unique aptitude for hand-to-hand combat, and sensors indicate several Mantis among the slaver crew. If my teleporter is up to it, I might be able to transport a commando team onto the slave ship and kill the slavers in hand-to-hand combat, which might allow me to free many of the slaves.Perhaps I can scare them into freeing one or two of them after beating up their ship, but those freed slaves will still have to join my crew, and the rest will remain enslaved. I can attack the slave ship, which would certainly be just, but if I destroy them, I’ll kill all their innocent slaves.But we’re not exactly going into peaceful territory, and it’s not unlikely that our new crewmember and all the rest of us will perish somewhere out here in deep space, so I may not really be doing them a favor: perhaps a life of slavery is better than explosive decompression in hostile territory. I can afford it, and I could use another crewmember, ever since Declan was killed by those giant alien arachnids a few beacons back. I can buy a slave, and free them, though they will have to join my crew, as I don’t have the time or means to put them anywhere else.Their captain hails me, and offers me “laborers” for cheap. I cautiously order the crew to go to yellow alert, uncertain about their intentions, when I suddenly recognize the ship as a well-known slave trader. As the FTL engines rev down, my sensors indicate that there’s a ship parked not far from this beacon.
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