Chapter Text
This was the last time Fjord let Beau and Jester talk him into doing something because 'it'll be fun Fjord, where's your sense of adventure'.
He'd barely known them a week but still he should have known their idea of fun would get him thrown in jail, still covered in the guts of a frog fiend that had zombified half a carnival audience.
He was surprised the middle-of-nowhere space station floating over a farming planet even had enough jail space for the lot of them. He was sharing a cell with Beau, Jester and the Carnival fortune teller he was holding personally responsible for dragging them into this mess.
On the other side of the bars to one side was the Carnival's front man and an assortment of other Carnival staff, looking maudlin, and on the other a goblin Fjord didn't recognise.
The guards finished their rambling and surely not legal threats and headed through into the next room, leaving them all to sweat until they worked out what was actually going on.
The goblin in the other cell watched the guards leave, her ears twitching until they were out of earshot, and then she rushed towards the bars to their cell.
"Any of you lot pilots?" she hissed through the gap. She was clearly trying for intimidation, but she looked more frightened of them than anything.
"What?" Fjord asked, frowning with suspicion.
"I've got a ship, fast enough to get us out of here, but I just got arrested for piloting without a license and I can't leave my ship impounded. It's MINE."
"How did you get a ship, little one?" the fortune teller grinned, slouching over to the bars.
She showed off some impressive teeth. "Doesn't matter, my name's on the paperwork. Nott the Brave it says, right there all official like. It's mine. But I need a pilot. A crew."
"Hello, Nott the Brave, I'm Jester," Jester introduced herself, thrusting out her hand for a shake only to withdraw it when Nott just stared.
"I don't know if you noticed," Beau butted in, deadpan. "But we're all in jail right now. We're going nowhere fast."
"But you can pilot? Licensed?"
"Not me," Jester shrugged. "But I could learn?"
"I'm licensed," Beau shrugged. "I've been flying light craft on my… back home… for years."
Fjord shot a questioning look her way and she shrugged again. It looked like they were doing this. "I was crew on a ship," he said. "We all had to be licensed to fly."
"How big?" the goblin's massive eyes narrowed.
"A merchant vessel. Fifty hands, two engines, base AI."
"You sound experienced." She stepped away from the bars for a moment, pacing a quick circuit of the cell. "I'm the owner, understand? But you could be Captain, her as pilot," she shot a gesture at Beau. "I've got no destination in mind, we'll go wherever you think. I just need to make enough money to keep her running; earn enough for repairs and you can keep the rest."
"Like Ms Beau said," the fortune teller said with a grin. "We're still in jail."
"You're innocent, right? It was the fiend frog guy, you were just defending yourselves? I was listening. You won't be here long."
"And you?" Fjord asked.
She grinned. "Don't worry about me. I'll give you directions and I'll meet you there."
~
"You really thinking about going along with this, Fjord?" Beau pressed as they crossed Trostenwold's upper hab ring, heading for the docks. Just like Nott had said, they'd been released once the guards had decided it was too much effort to try and second guess their statements. In the portholes they could see the planet below, wild and green, too far away to tell farms from wilderness.
"Access to a ship?" Fjord pondered. "Not spending every coin we earn on transit. A way to make some money for ourselves? Of course I'm thinking about it."
"What if it's a wreck," Beau said. "She mentioned repairs."
"We've not signed anything. When we see the ship we'll know more. We could even ask to inspect it before we do anything. We just walk away if it doesn't look safe."
"We must be near; this is the bay." The fortune teller – Mollymauk, Fjord reminded himself – was more subdued than he'd been the last few days, having said goodbye to the circus that had been his home, but he seemed committed to joining them on this next step of their journey.
They'd been given a bay name and a ship name, enough to find Nott's vessel in theory, but right now they were looking out over a bay holding six one-man fighters, two of which were mostly in pieces, an array of short distance shuttles of various provenance and the sleek black hulled mass of an Imperial Warship that took up most of the rest of the space. It loomed overhead on eight stocky legs as big as siege towers.
"Do you think they took it somewhere else?" Jester asked, eyeing the shuttles. A couple of them looked big enough to fit all of them, but it wasn't exactly what Fjord had been envisioning when Nott had said 'Captain'.
"Yo!" Beau called down to the engineer working on the fighters. "Looking for the MiT-9?"
The engineer gave a puzzled frown, and Fjord had a moment wondering if Nott the goblin was some kind of con artist before the engineer gave a slow point up. At the damned Imperial Warship.
So. Not a con artist, just certifiable.
Molly was laughing himself silly while Jester delighted over how pretty it was, how sleek and "I bet it goes fast – do you think it goes fast Fjord?"
Fjord did not, in fact, think something this big went particularly fast at all.
"I think we're in the wrong place," he said flatly. "This isn't a ship for us."
"It's been decommissioned," Beau observed, half her body over the railing to take a closer look at the ship's hull. "Do you see the blank panels –" she pointed out a couple of places where plates of metal had been riveted into place. "I bet it was one of those experimental prototypes that come up for sale after the military secrets act has run out on them."
Taking a second, more considered look over the ship, Fjord could see the pitting of the metal that spoke of a decade or more in open space, but only a few more recent signs of combat. The modifications, presumably removing any number of high powered or experimental weapons – had been done relatively crudely, leaving visible marks and in one place what looked like damage that had been over-patched from the inside. Even the ship's registration was scraped and patched so it just read IT-9.
The arcane array was still in place, at least, so it wasn't completely indefensible. Not that Fjord had ever used an arcane array, but he knew how it worked in principle, and given he appeared to have gained some magic who-the-hell-knew-where there was a chance he'd be able to use it.
"Can you imagine Nott flying this thing, solo, without a license?" Molly asked, still chuckling.
It wasn't as big as it seemed. The bay was designed for smaller vessels and they'd presumably only squeezed it in here because there was no point taking up billable space with an impounded ship. It was bigger than the skiff Fjord had been picturing, but still smaller than Vandren's old ship.
It would be a challenge with six hands, let alone one-manning it and apparently patching repairs at the same time.
"It's probably got an AI system," Beau proposed, giving Jester a frown and a second glance as the tiefling had pulled out a sketchbook and dropped to the floor on the walkway, apparently drawing the ship.
"It's too old for a full hands-free system," Fjord pointed out. "They only started bringing in reliable full ship AI over the last five years – this is at least ten years old if it's outlived its secrets act, that pitting says it might be older. Older AI were… not safe to be left to fly themselves. Prone to making poorly rationalised decisions."
"I mean, if you assume the majority of technological advancement comes from military craft after the enter the public domain, it's possible this ship has an early AI."
Fjord narrowed his eyes at Beau. For someone who claimed she hadn't been around big ships much, she sure had some very specific knowledge.
"So…" Nott's voice was startling from immediately behind them, and Beau swore creatively under her breath as Nott continued: "What do you think?"
"Nott, where did you get this ship?" Beau asked. "If you had the money to buy it, you wouldn't be flying it without a crew."
"You don't need to worry about that. All you need to know it that it's mine, it's my name on the paperwork. If you try to cut me out or leave me behind you better believe there's traps and tripwires through out the whole ship, and just as many in the programming."
"Hey," Jester interrupted. "We're not trying to cut you out, Nott. Only… this ship looks important. Is anyone going to be looking for it? Did you steal it?"
"Let's… go inside."
~
The inside of the ship looked to be in worse shape than the outside. There were sections of paneling missing, the wiring and control crystals inside were exposed to the elements, and some sections had work lamps set up where the overhead lighting was out.
"It's a work in progress, okay?" Nott said as they glanced at a workstation in pieces on the ground.
They made it to an access ladder and Nott started to climb.
"No elevators?" Jester asked sadly.
"There's a gas leak on a couple of the mid floors," Nott called down, not pausing her climb as she explained: "I managed to get the engine room and computer core vented just enough to go in with a suit and oxygen, but the safety controls on the elevators won't let it pass through those sections.
"Great," Beau drawled as she exited the ladder shaft behind Fjord. "Feels super safe."
"I'll give you a pad marking the areas, but if a door doesn't open automatically, maybe don't force it."
"And she's space-worthy?" Fjord checked.
"Sure. Absolutely. Totally safe." Nott gave a nervous glance to them all before opening the door to what was clearly a control room.
This room was in better condition; wires all tucked away, lights all on and an array of seats set up at control panels and displays. It was small, but wandering over to the displays Fjord could see the full extent of the ship it controlled.
Nott sat down at one of the consoles, immediately working away as the ship started to power up.
"You know, I've flown on far worse," Molly said, looking around with a broad grin. "What do you say… Captain?"
Fjord ignored him long enough to check life support, hull integrity, power, thrust and engines – the bare minimum to get them from place to place without killing them all. "I can't see we're going to find a better opportunity to make our way," he conceeded.
"Speaking of," Nott cleared her throat. "We really do need to… make way. We have about ten minutes left before they realise I'm gone."
"What?"
"I also deactivated the immobiliser they put on the Nine. So… Time to go."
"O…kay." Beau slid into the seat at the console next to Nott, powering up the interface and spreading her hands over the screen for a moment. "Would this be a bad time to mention that this is ten times bigger than the largest thing I've ever flown?"
"It's very intuitive," Nott replied. "Just don't make any sharp turns in atmosphere, and don't engage the engines until we've cleared the station. We'll be fine."
Beau took a long deep breath, and elbowed Molly towards one of the other stations as he stepped up alongside her, eyes bright and curious.
Nott shifted over to what looked like a status display, perhaps engineering control, as the engines started to cycle up. Slowly the ship picked up that tiny vibration that Fjord hadn't even realised he'd missed after being on the station for so long.
"Interface," Nott said firmly, and the holographic projectors flashed and then materialised a bright blue glowing ball, about the size of Beau's head in front of Fjord.
"Oooh, you're so beautiful," Jester said, dancing away from the display she had taken a position at to flutter her fingers at the hologram.
"Give Beau a checklist," Nott continued. "I'll do engine warmup."
The bright interface bobbed a couple of times in the air and then disappeared, reappearing in front of Beau and spreading out until it formed a secondary display in front of her, data scrolling.
"So it is an AI based ship?" Molly asked.
"Can we do anything?" Jester asked, clearly delighted at the frenetic energy now filling the room.
"Find a seat," Nott called back over the thruster sounds suddenly throttling up as Beau took control, ignoring Molly's question. "Engine hot," she added.
"Releasing the clamps," Beau replied.
Molly cleared his throat from the next control panel over, "I suggested that engineer clear the bay for you," he chuckled. "I thought it seemed sensible."
Beau shot him a look, eyes wide. "Thank you," she hissed.
There was an unconscious holding of breath, the whole room silent except for the thrumming engine and the louder noise of the thrusters as Beau took them carefully out of the bay and through the thoroughfare to the main forcefield and out into space.
They all gave a deep and satisfying sigh as Beau brought them to a stop, the interface switching to show local craft movements around the station.
"Where to?" Beau asked.
"Well… we were heading towards Rexxentrum –" There was a brief flickering of the lights and the interface that made Fjord grimace. "But this thing looks like it needs some repair time. Maybe we try to pick up some work along the way and make a bit of money to get a repair crew in?"
"You're not bringing a repair crew on this ship," Nott said sharply. "It's mine to repair."
"Nott… you've already told us that the engine and three floors on either side are flooded with toxic gas."
"And now I have a crew on board, I'll have time to fix things. We'll need to fuel up and pick up parts. Alfield's closest if we're heading North."
"Alfield it is," Beau said, and immediately the interface was displaying a route out through the cloud of ships and satelites.
~
It had taken Jester a few hours to get used to the layout of the ship, as sprawling as it was, and longer still to determine that every room was as plain and soulless as the last. She finally found one section of barracks type accommodation – a chain of rooms with two bunkbeds and a little washroom in each. She took a moment to imagine it bustling with armoured soldiers joking and teasing and falling in love…
This bland nothing would take some work. She headed for the intercom on the wall.
"You guys, I found our rooms – there's bunkbeds!" She stuck her head out of the room to look at the label beside the door. "It's C34," she continued. "Come dump your stuff."
She turned back to the room. "Umm… Interface?" she asked hesitantly. A bright blue ball flickered into sight in front of her and she grinned at it. "Hey!" It bobbed up and down in something approaching a greeting. "I need paint. Something I can use on the walls. Can you show me where to find it?"
She had expected the interface to perhaps display a map, or trigger a display on one of the walls. Instead it darted around her and started to bounce out of the room and down the corridor, flickering slightly as it passed through the doorway and moved from one set of holoprojectors to the next.
As it moved it seemed to stretch, almost appearing more like an animal bounding away than the nondescript ball it had previously appeared. Laughing with delight at the novelty of it all, Jester skipped down the corridor after it, dodging Mollymauk and Fjord coming the other way with their packs.
"Something exciting?" Molly asked.
"Everything!" she shouted back.
~
Fjord sat back in the central chair as Beau finished off the route planning and left him on his own in the control room. With a minute to breathe, he pulled the console around to continue scanning through the information that Nott had provided.
It was so little, no where near enough to be considered a manual, and no sign of a real manual anywhere on the computer systems.
This was… really not great.
There were things to be wary of, if you were buying an ex-Empire ship.
The Empire had a lot of the sector's most significant researchers and engineers, and so generated a lot of experimental and state of the art ships. Some were tested and put into service, some were left in the 'maybe if war breaks out' pile, and a small number were put away in a 'perhaps we'll be able to salvage it for parts later' pile.
That last was generally a scrapyard located very far from where anyone lived, because those were the ones that tended to leak toxins, create unstable localised magical effects or randomly explode without warning.
They were rich enough, in the sector, that there was no rush in deconstruction. And sometimes even the most experimental prototypes could do interesting things after being put in storage for some time.
So all of these ships, no matter how functional (or non), were kept for the ten years that was considered legal for the Military Secrets Act and then anything that hadn't made it into military service was sold to the highest bidder, either whole or in parts. Advanced, experimental, prototype technology - now ten years out of date - released on the unsuspecting population.
Demilitarised, of course, but if you had the credits for the ship then buying the ammunition or warheads or powercells to recharge the built-in weaponry wasn't a big deal. Or else you hired a magic user and they channelled through the arcane array that was standard. The danger was rarely in the actual weaponry and far more often in the instability of the technology.
There was a good business out there for technically minded folks who bought these kinds of ships and disassembled them for insight into the future of domestic Empire technology. Plenty of the advancements in the modern ship building business had come from these studies.
Regardless, there was no guarantee which of the three options you were getting. If you had your pick, you looked for something beaten up with a high serial number – meaning the model was stable enough that they decided to build more, and it was sturdy enough to go into combat and survive it. Maybe it would have a few hull fractures, but those could be repaired. Better that than a power core that would explode for no reason anyone could pin down.
No matter what, ex-Empire ship stock came with a manual so big it wouldn't fit on a standard data terminal, and the expectation that anyone piloting knew it inside and out. Some stations refused docking for certain classes, because the manual was so complex they couldn't justify paying someone to read through it to find out what their docking parameters were.
Fjord was currently in charge of a ship with a sub-ten serial number, limited signs of battle, and no trace of a manual. Safe to say he was having second thoughts about this whole enterprise.
All he really wanted was transit to Rexxentrum and a couple of opportunities to make money along the way. Working his way was his best option, and up until a few hours ago the idea that he could do it in his own ship was a pipe dream.
Too bad he was in far too deep with these crazy halfwits and their surely stolen MiT class ex-warship, 9th of her line and Fjord would be surprised if they ever built the 10th.
Well, nothing for it now but to learn everything he could and keep her in one piece until they got to the next repair station. It was going to be a long journey.