Shortly after leaving Ares-3, a Runner-class ship, the Wild Wild West hailed the Earwig crew. Its captain, the tavak Gudun, acknowledged his former classmate Vedeg, then got to brass tacks. He sought a verpid matching Deadbeef’s current host’s description.

Gudun forestalled and hemming and hawing on the Earwig crew’s part by pulling broadcasting a to the Earwig’s display Feed video from Ares-3 bar prominently displaying the crew defending against Derek Streets’ attack. Then, the window displaying that video paused and shrank and focus shifted to video of a verpid in a lab trying out forms of various races. When it tried on its human-shape form, the video paused, and the computer performed a quick imaging analysis of the verpid vs. Deadbeef. They were the same.

Gudun explained that his Laser crew had a contract to recover the verpid, and he intended to honor it. The Wild Wild West opened fire.

An exchange of fancy flying, electronic warfare, and intense weaponry proved the Earwig’s crew superior. They crippled the Wild Wild West, towed the ship and its abashed crew to the nearest station, and uploaded holos of the Gudun’s humiliating defeat to the Feed, where it became an immediate hit.