Did anyone spare Petrov? Let me spin you a tale.
I sweet talked my way onto the Scow, and got Petrov to show us to his vault. Of course, the game gives no option other than to steal the Artifact and when I did Petrov turned hostile, as expected.
Where things got interesting is that when I decided to kill Petrov's minder rather than killing the little weasel first. I did this, but Petrov put on a surprising turn of speed and vanished through the hatch, and bu the time I'd finished killing the other guards, there was no sign of him.
All right, fair enough. My character isn't the bloodthirsty sort. Let him keep his life, I thought. I'll clear out with minimum contract and he can count himself lucky. And I did just that, taking some creative routes through the Scow to avoid most of the guards.
Friends, I am here to tell you that was a mistake! With Petrov still alive, the Scow fires on you the moment you undock, and it has some ferocious weaponry to bring to bear at point blank range. It was all I could do to power up the Grav Drive and jump out of there. And then, to add insult to injury, I nearly got arrested by the UC at New Atlantis for piracy!
I eventually managed to pay off my bounty at a terminal on my outpost on Kreet, and then jumped back to New Atlantis, gave my ship some much needed repairs and turned in the mission.
The moral of this tale is a simple one: If you have to rob a man, best not to leave him alive to come after you. And if I ever visit the Scow again in some future incarnation, I'm going to turn it from a museum into a mausoleum.
Thank you for listening.
It would have been OK on oldreddit ...
Oh well, point taken, added a nsfw tag.