Later that same trip, I spot a Commissar Limo going by with a couple of Ray escorts. I think nothing of it and carry on trudging towards the station (out of witchdrive fuel, it's a pain). A little later I hear the Commissar squealing for help and I mull it over before deciding I can probably manage another fight this run and head towards him. And... nothing. He carries on running for the planet while signalling continuously for help, but there's no sign of any bad guys - nor of the Rays. I'm guessing they may have hit trouble out of my scanner range and the Commissar AI gets it to run away while the Rays buy the collective farm for him. After escorting the coward for a while, I left him to it and got on with docking. No pirates or rebels to be seen.
And the dream: I reached the system to find myself trying to dock with a Klemperer Rosette of stations. Awesome but impractical since they were revolving at some speed around their common centre (and some of them had docking bays shaped like the fleur-de-lys on a Scout badge, too). But it left me feeling that someone needs to code up an OXP with Rosettes in it... and then I started thinking about Ringworlds...
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