FSE

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Trillian scratched behind an ear as he studied his readouts. What the Deymarii was telling him about the hulk that was caught in a slow, canted rotation two-thousand kilometres off the rimward bow was immense. The hulk was Jes'wan and it was no hulk. It had been wrecked, sure, but to a small degree; there was a long, narrow tear in the ship's flank, like a paper cut had been sliced neatly into its silver-blue skin. The drive wheel, a large halo that sat at an extreme angle, almost laying flat, was still rotating, if a little slower than usual. The running lights were still on, greens and blues glinting like distant stars along its sleek body. It looked abandoned, yet none of the escape pod hatches had been blown and his scans were telling him that they were still there and intact. Trillian leaned back in his chair as he mulled over his options and went over what he knew of Jes'wan built starships.

He knew, just by looking at her that she was a warship. A high end ship-of-the-line to boot. The drive wheel positioning was a dead giveaway, as Jes'wa had stopped constructing them to sit in an upright position, instead building them much smaller and opting to lay them almost flat so that they could be better shielded by the ship itself. This drive wheel was almost flat, the ship's form sleek, angular and predatory, making it perfect for stealth manoeuvres. That alone, to his mind, put her at being a mere ten years old. He sipped at his mug of... he eyeballed the viscous liquid in the non-spill mug. The tin he had bought with what was left of his money had been labelled as caff, but it certainly was not caff. He sipped it anyway on the grounds that beggars can't be choosers and he was well into the realm of Beggars. The amount of debris coming out of Thymion had seen to that. All those scraps, some of which being full hulls, had saturated the market. Buying had slowed down and it had inevitably left the local Scavs poorer than usual with their holds crammed with potential profits that just weren't selling.

A few Scavs he knew of had quit and had moved on to other things. Mostly things the law frowned upon; prostitution, petty theft right up to establishing gambling dens and finding themselves absorbed into one of their local gangs. The galaxy's underworld claimed all those who were down on their luck at some point. Including himself. In the last four months since coming across his last Thymion registered ship, he had reintroduced his old Tenglaari corvette to a life she knew well. The Deymarii was built as a sensors corvette and he had bought her second-hand with most of the electronic warfare suite still intact. The rest of the components he had found on the black market in some back water system he frequented. The Deymarii, despite her age, was once again fit to fight. And Trillian had put that to good use in short order the moment his desperation had become too great. He was half starved, dangerously malnourished and he had shed half his body weight since his military career had collapsed around him. More often than not, his Synth self was the only thing keeping him alive between sporadic nibbles on his rations and the best meal he had had was a cup of fresh, ice cold water.

Desperation had eventually driven him to test the waters of piracy. He had located a prison barge on a routine cruise from its resupply depot to its home base at Huyen Orbital, a security station that watched over a prison planet. The Deymarii had easily cracked the old ships' security centre and the cargo bay doors had opened, spilling anything that hadn't been secured into the black. He had swiped everything he could and had sailed into the slipstream before the prison barge could remove the wool from its eyes and call for backup. Needless to say, Trillian had eaten his fill that day. It was prison food, but it was still food and was packed with nutrients, vitamins and proteins. Everything a prison planet needed to fuel its mining industry. After that, he had hit a small fuel tanker headed for a civilian station. It had been automated and he had persuaded it to follow him off its plotted course. He had refilled his auxiliary fuel tanks and put some into storage for sale then picked through what little cargo it had - mostly spare parts for cruise liners that were no doubt docked at its destination for repairs and refuelling. Some of those he had sold at a distant auction house and he had actually gotten good money for the spares. Apparently, Queen Lorana class luxury cruise ships had a habit of breaking down and certain parts were hard to come by, thus making them much sought after by desperate mechanics and technicians. He had let them go at half price due to the heat they carried, but the profit was still decent enough for him and his buyers hadn't complained about their goods being stolen from someone else.

All of that had inevitably set off a chain reaction which had pushed him deeper into uncharted territory. Piracy, it turned out, seemed to suit him. A life in the military had given him the necessary skills to pull it off with varying degrees of success, but had also hammered into him caution and the need for careful planning. And on top of all that, the Deymarii was telling him that he had an abandoned Jes'wan battlecruiser right in front of his nose, ripe for the picking. He laughed, chastising himself. He had found it only because he had come to this barren system to pick over the corpse of a long abandoned mining effort. In fact, had he not hit the system with a tachyon burst in his desperation for something of potential worth, he wouldn't had known the battlecruiser was here at all. It was drifting through the shadow of an asteroid, hidden from plain sight until the tachyons he had sent out came back with their report. The Jes'wan weren't in the habit of leaving their ships drifting, which had him feeling twitchy. They would no doubt turn up in the nick of time to catch him in the act of boarding. It would be just his luck.

But then, there was no I.D beacon reply to the Deymarii's query. There wasn't even a distress call. The battlecruiser was silent on every channel, even the tachnet. Trillian checked the monitor that displayed his probe's readouts. The probe had made several orbits of the ship, interrogating it on all frequencies and was now heading back for download.

'She's beautiful.' A voice said to his right.

'She's Jes'wan. They don't know how to create ugly.' Trillian replied absently. He looked up at the Sangaardian rabbit who had stepped on to the bridge. She was dressed in a loose fitting ship suit he had managed to scrounge up. It was as frayed as he was, but it was functional and would do for now. She was absently grooming the tip of an ear as she looked at the warship displayed on the bridge's wrap-around view screens. 'And she's a warship, so even in death she's lethal. That's why I'm not getting any closer until I'm sure...'

'Sure?' She asked. Tasmine was a botanist he had picked up whilst on a requested salvage run some two weeks ago. In the end, he hadn't been paid and the man - another Sangaardian - had refused Tasmine's right to board his ship for transfer home. An argument had erupted between the two parties, and in the end, even the threat of sending Jorst over for a visit hadn't swayed the old bastard's hand.

He had claimed that he didn't have the medical equipment necessary to take care of her. Neither did Trillian, on his old corvette, but the tiger had been lumped with her anyway. She had spent most of her time aboard in an induced coma as she recovered; mostly because even after her wounds had healed, the mental ones had not and she always woke up in a blind terror, screaming about plants and monsters. It was bewildering and would have been funny if she wasn't so terrified. Even Jorst had started to get worried over her and Trillian quite often found the Tenglaari fussing over the rabbit, making sure that she was comfortable and that she wasn't wanting for anything. Three days ago she had woken up without a sound and he had explained to her her circumstances and how she had been found. He hadn't been enlightened about what had actually happened to her, but the medical records the Deymarii had produced about her physical state left him wondering if he should go back and raze the planet she had been found on. Her scarring was extensive and it had left her sterile and carrying some serious mental scarring.

'Jes'wan ships are rigged to defend themselves or even outright explode if one of them is boarded. Which makes me suspicious about this one.' He looked down at the probe monitor again. He gestured to the chair next to him and she settled into it. If he had another mouth to feed, he may as well try to make some use of her, 'There are no life signs aboard. The escape pods all look to be still there, too. Drives are in stand-by and ready to go. There's no signal of any sort, incoming or outgoing. She's just drifting. What does that tell you?' He asked, sliding effortlessly back into the role of C.O teaching a new crewmember the lay of the land.

She looked at the screens that lit up around her. It wasn't long before she stopped her nervous grooming and started scrolling through the collected data, slowly at first then faster with more confidence as she bent her mind to the mystery. After all that had happened, Trillian never wanted another crew, but he found that he did indeed miss it. Both Jorst and Tasmine's presence, whilst at first, was a problem for him, turned into a positive. He had discovered that he was incredibly lonely and at a loss for what to do. He had made friends within the tight-knit Scav community, but it wasn't the same as what he was used to. He had grown up being surrounded by people. Had gone through life with a duty to perform as part of a crew. And the moment he had been stripped of all that, he had teetered on the brink of a darkness so deep that he had feared he would fall in. And right now, looking at that ship, the power she represented, he could feel the ground start to crumble beneath his feet. The ledge he was standing on was weakening and the darkness was beckoning him with open arms and a devilish grin.

'They might still be aboard, but dead. Maybe a containment unit for a drive coolant system broke and poisoned the air and water supply before they could do anything about it.' Tasmine said. She looked up, staring hard at the battlecruiser for a moment, 'An alien pathogen was accidentally introduced to the ship after shore leave? The Jes'wan immune system is sturdy, but tricky to deal with when it comes to unknowns or mutated strains. Or, they could have abandoned ship. Off-loaded onto another vessel and set her free. Which doesn't make sense since there's no transponder of any sort that's active. Doesn't look to be any quarantine marks on her hull, either.'

Trillian nodded, encouraging her. The more ideas he had to work with, the easier it would be to come up contingencies to tackle this problem. After all, the last time he had picked up a stray hulk, Thymion had insinuated its way back into his life. He leaned forward and brought up the helm controls. He pressed his palm, fingers splayed, across the surface of a square sheet of silver that he had installed in the left arm of his chair some time ago. The Deymarii reacted smoothly and broke anchor, heading towards the warship. The Deymarii then shifted, rotating and joined the Jes'wan ship in its roll, matching its speed and vector to better the chances of reigning it in. Trillian activated the tractor beam and he spent the next twenty minutes slowly, carefully bringing the battlecruiser to a halt, effectively anchoring her in place with the corvette. Now fixed in position, she slowly came out of the asteroid's shadow, revealing herself in full in the light of the system's star.

'What do you intend to do?' She asked, her eyes wide. She was still frightened and he had no doubt that she would always have a hunted look deep in her eyes.

'Taking a closer look.' He said, standing up.

She grabbed his wrist, looking at him imploringly, terrified to be left alone, 'Jorst's awake. Let him take his suit out. It'll give him something to do.' She added weakly.

Jorst. Ah, Jorst. The Tenglaari shock trooper who Trillian had liberated from a space station prison cell after he had punched the station master through a wall, turning his ribcage to fragments and powder. The station master had barely survived, but Trillian held no empathy for the man as he was a renowned bastard for singling out mercs and making them pay through the nose for docking with the station. Jorst had tagged along the moment he had learned about the Deymarii, spouting something about respect and honouring the past. And also that he owed Trillian a debt for saving him from the executioner's block. Having a Synth Fleet Lord breathing down his neck was one thing, but having a Tenglaari shock trooper, one of the most feared warriors in existence tagging along with his captured 20-tonne mech was something else. But Tasmine had a point. If there was going to be trouble, then Jorst would be the best one to deal with it.

Trillian sighed and sat down, keying the comm for Jorst's attention.

'Jorst here.' Came the gruff reply.

'Jorst, we got a stray Jes'wan battlecruiser out here. No life signs, no signals. Just abandoned. You up for some recon?' Trillian said.

He could feel the Tenglaari's grin, 'Space walk or boarding?'

'Space walk. There's a gash down her rimward flank. Have a peek inside but don't enter unless you're absolutely sure you can do so without getting vaped.'

'I'm on it. Jorst out.' The line went dead with a click and Trillian sat back in his chair. He flicked all the gathered data to Jorst's wetware so he could see what had already been gathered. Then the comm opened again, 'Shit, a triple tungsten-crystal composite hull? Surely you're not thinking of selling it off?' Jorst came back, sounding horrified with the idea. Even Tasmine looked at him like he was mad to even consider hauling it to the nearest auction.

Trillian opened his mouth to reply. Then closed it again. That battlecruiser, if safe for the taking, would allow him to do much more with his life than picking through other people's trash. It would be hellishly expensive for one man to operate, but for a crew... for the first time in a long time, a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

'See if we can take it.' He found himself saying. 'Anything is better than scavenging. Keep the line open and give us a visual.'

'Aye, Captain. Connecting Sphinx Combat Unit Eleven to Deymarii's tacnet. Tacnet connection established.' Jorst said, a feral glee underscoring his words.

Trillian looked to his tactical monitors. A notation popped up, announcing that the mech was connected and broadcasting. The blast doors for the small hangar bay irised open and Jorst fell away from the corvette, his icon pinging the sensors and being displayed as SNX-11 on the sensor and tactical screens. Trillian and Tasmine both watched Jorst guide his mech around and away from the Deymarii, heading towards the battlecruiser. Jorst landed carefully on a bare stretch of the silver-blue hull and engaged the magnetics in the bird-like feet of his mech. He stood there for a moment in silence, looking out across the plain of smooth metal and crystal fused armour of the Jes'wan ship, his sensor suite investigating everything it could reach.

He looked up at the squared off form of the Deymarii, the white and blue hull carbon scored but gleaming in the light of the nearby star that was slowly consuming the worlds of the barren system the ship had drifted into. Jorst raised a huge, armoured hand and gave an Okay gesture.

'I'm going for a stroll.' He said over the open comm.

'Copy that, Sphinx Eleven. I got you on visual and all lines are green.' Trillian replied.

Jorst started forward, walking until he came to a large, perfectly formed low dome in the ship's hull. He scanned it. The Deymarii agreed with his suit that it was a capped point-defence cannon. He looked around and saw three more. He queried the data the corvette had acquired and saw that the ship's PDC network was in the standard honeycomb configuration, allowing for maximum coverage. Sitting in the middle of the octagon formed by the capped PDCs was a large hatch, flush with the hull. A stowed missile battery. Further up ahead was a smaller hatch. Another query and a visual investigation revealed it to be a stowed gauss cannon. Jorst spent the next couple of hours giving the hull of the ship a once-over, counting four missile batteries, four gauss cannons, two beam weapons, a trio of chaff launchers and a mine dispenser. The readings he was getting from them, though faint, told him enough.

The weapons had been used, but it was far from recent by this point. The lack of carbon scoring on the hull told him that the ship had had recent maintenance, too. The tear in the side, however, remained a mystery. It was perfectly cut, as if a beam weapon had been used against the ship, but the lingering rad readings he was getting from the cut said different. It was just the natural ambience of open space mixed with the lingering aftertaste of FTL travel. The edges of the wound weren't melted, either. They were perfectly smooth, as of a razor blade slicing paper.

'Sphinx Eleven to Deymarii.'

'Go ahead Sphinx Eleven.'

'Can you scan the battlecruiser's shields? Something about this tear isn't sitting right.' Jorst said as he peered into the dark interior.

'Standby for scan.' Trillian replied.

Jorst directed his mech's external spotlights to get a look inside. He grunted as he saw the shredded remains of the compartments beyond. The tear ran down the flank, from midships to drive ring hood without touching the weaponry. It was precision damage, the kind of thing done to scare a ship's captain into capitulation as opposed to destroying the ship.

'Whatever happened, I think they wanted the ship intact.' Jorst mused.

'I think you're right. The shields are depleted and the E-Shields are offline altogether.' Trillian replied. He sent the gathered data to Jorst who was kneeling down and peering into the interior. Jorst told him what he was seeing.

'Someone definitely wanted it intact. Can you see anything regarding the ship's name or class?' Trillian asked.

'I'll go look.' Jorst shut down his magnetics and pushed gently away from the hull, engaging his propulsion systems as he twisted in space to come about. He angled upward, cruising slowly along the flank of the ship some one-hundred kilometres away from it, searching for any signs of registry. He orbited the battlecruiser several more times but came up short. The only thing he had discovered was a few numbers that had been rubbed off the metal.

'Rubbed off? You mean sanded off.' Trillian said.

'Nope. Definitely been rubbed off the hull.' Jorst replied and sent some close-up stills of the marred registration number to Trillian.

The tiger made an odd noise in the back of his throat. Jorst chuckled darkly, knowing what Trillian was now thinking.

'The E-Shields still down?' Trillian asked even though he himself could see its status from his end.

Jorst checked his mech's sensor suite anyway, 'Still down. And I'm not getting any readings for life signs, either.'

'Hold position while I see if I can pull something out of the MilNet and MDB.' Trillian said before going quiet. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty before he came back, 'I think I have something. Found it in the MDB. Four years ago, a mercenary Jes'wan battlecruiser called the M'luh Greysana entered the slipstream and was never heard from again. She left the shipyard Toa'nuss B'trass and was headed for the front line at the Jinsarian Sound. She never hit realspace and she never sent out a single broadcast.' Trillian sent the file to Jorst's mech. 'As is tradition on Jes'wa, the ship was stripped of her name after all search efforts were shelved and the new M'luh Greysana was commissioned shortly after.'

'She's an extremely long way from either of those places,' Tasmine could be heard saying, 'Just over twenty-seven AU away, in fact...'

'Ooohh, spooky. I love a good ghost story. I can see the quarter deck hangar doors from here, you want me to check out her guts?' Jorst said. He was eager for the challenge and by this point they had already wasted a full day just watching it. With no signs of activity barring the running lights and drive wheel, Trillian couldn't deny the Tenglaari warrior his curiosity.

'Keep the line open and give me a live visual feed. Look for traps first. Life second. Then plug the Deymarii into the datacore if you can. I want that ship if at all possible.'

'Oh, I will get you that ship.' Jorst growled eagerly. He paused and added, 'What if Things got to the crew?'

'With the E-Shields down, it wouldn't surprise me. Stay safe, Jorst. If you do come across anything, consider a tactical retreat.' Trillian said, knowing full well what a tactical retreat was to the Tenglaar: fall back and let your explosives do all the hard work. 'Standby for entry.'

'Aye Captain.'

Trillian keyed in a set of commands and the Deymarii forced a connection with the quarter deck's auxiliary systems. The hangar door in the flat of the battlecruiser's back slid open with a puff of vapour. Jorst stared down into the darkened interior, a pang of worry sliding into his mind. He pushed it aside, pointed his spots into the darkness and swept the area before entering. There was no sign of life and when he landed, he saw no signs of a struggle. A quartet of liftlocks, two to either side of the hangar, were empty. There were no shuttles, no signs there had been any present. The quarter deck was clean and tidy.

'Launching recon drones.' Jorst announced.

'Copy that, Sphinx Eleven. It's pretty bland in there.' Trillian said.

Jorst ordered his suit to release a pair of small, snake-like drones. They rolled from hidden compartments in the mech's legs and vanished into the darkness, their orders to explore and report what they found. Until they reported back with an all-clear, Jorst wasn't leaving his suit. Instead, he settled for watching what they were doing on his HUD.

They had found a maintenance conduit in the depths of the quarter deck and were now working their way deeper into the ship. They slithered quietly through the various compartments, taking in the sights, testing the air and any fluids they came across. None of the compartments were sealed up, not even the bridge and CIC. Engineering was wide open, too. There was no life and no bodies to hint at what had happened. The medibay was empty and unused, and the ship still had a full stock of sealed, long-life supplies. The perishables in the galley had been eaten, or maybe even taken by the crew to some other place, but all the shelves, cupboards and magazines were loaded.

'We got a fully stocked battlecruiser with access to all the sensitive areas. The air's good to breath, water's safe to drink and the pressure is normal. There's power and the datacore is- ah. There it is. The datacore is protected.' Jorst said as one of his drones went offline in a burst of static.

'Looks like an EMP system. Get too close and it'll fry the core and then you. Damn. Knew things were looking too good.' Trillian said. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully then looked to his ECMs and EWF suites. He could probably shut down those defences from the Deymarii so they could get to the datacore to find out what had happened. 'Keep your drone in position, but I want you off that ship. I'm going to see if I can shut down those defences from here.'

'Drone is hanging back and I'm heading out.' Jorst said.

He looked up, making sure the hangar doors were still open and then boosted out, the force field shimmering violet at his passage. Jorst boosted for the Deymarii, one eye on his drone's readouts. It had taken up vigil just outside the small, oval blast door that allowed access to the warship's datacore. Laying curled and charred at the base of a computer bank was the other drone, its one metre body twisted in knots from its writhing death. Jorst brought himself into an overwatch position above the corvette, so he could keep an eye on both ships and be prepared to bail at the same time. No one knew how the battlecruiser would react and this was as close as anyone wanted to get to it.

Trillian accessed the _Deymari_i's electronic warfare suite, laid in the parameters and set the A.I loose on the battlecruiser. He watched his EWF monitor, studying the various signals that popped up and vanished again as the Jes'wan ship tried to defend itself from the Tenglaari sensors corvette.

'It's putting up a good fight for something that's been abandoned.' Tasmine said. She too was watching the Deymarii trying to persuade the battlecruiser to give up its secrets.

'I'd hate to see what it would do to us if she was crewed.' He replied.

The Deymarii sensed an opening in the battlecruiser's defences and made a sly grab for the datacore, but the other ship hit the corvette's systems with a riposte that made its systems stutter. The Deymarii recovered its wits and pressed on, searching for a way in even as it fended off the battlecruiser's attempts to shut it down. Trillian found himself working hard to help the A.I get past the battlecruiser's ECMs. Even Tasmine and Jorst had pitched in, Jorst using his mech's own EWF suite to go at the Jes'wan ship from a different angle. Tasmine had taken to studying the readings, searching for any patterns and frequencies that looked to be exploitable. It took two hours for the three of them to deal with the one un-manned battlecruiser, but the Deymarii had finally broken into the datacore allowing Trillian to deposit a fresh set of command codes.

The battlecruiser's running lights dimmed and switched off as the drive wheel was braked to a halt and taken offline. All that remained was the open hangar bay doors and a tenuous electronic connection between the two ships. Trillian sat in silence, staring at his readouts. The battlecruiser was coming back online, one system at a time. The drive spooled up again, resuming its slow rotation and the running lights flickered back to life. Lights all across the ship switched on, bathing its interior in the soft glow of overheads and embedded floor lamps.

'She's broadcasting.' Tasmine breathed. She sounded exhausted and a little more stressed than usual. Trillian looked to her, saw the exhilaration on her face as she studied the fresh data. 'She's asking for a new name and a new captain.' Tasmine looked at him, a little bewildered.

Trillian grinned, 'Jes'wan ships tend to have a life of their own in some way. They are, after all, an elfish race. This ship has just woken up from a bad dream and wants to be put to use again.'

'Will you deny the lady?' Jorst asked.

'No. I won't. We've come too far to simply ignore this ship.' Trillian said, 'Your drone looks to be having the time of its life exploring the stacks.' He added, watching the small monitor that displayed the drone's readings and what it was seeing.

It was slithering freely, without hindrance, between tall server stacks encased in cylinders of a semi-translucent sapphire-like material. Telltale lights blinked and glowed across the stacks, and computer banks were ready to be brought out of standby. With his command codes in place and accepted by the other ship, Trillian used the Deymarii's isolated computer system to properly access the datacore of the Jes'wan ship. The connection came smoothly with no signs of subterfuge detected. He found the last set of ship logs and brought them up for all to see.

A heavy silence descended across the trio as they read the captain's last record. There was no audio, just text and it was short and terrified. The E-Shields had short-circuited in the slipstream and something beyond the FTL corridor took notice of them. One by one, the crew had disappeared without so much as a whisper as an un-penetrable darkness had seeped into the ship. The text was cut short. The captain, Captain Lanwin Buresh, had been cut off mid-sentence. Every recording, text or audio, was in the same vein: a ship hurtling at superluminal speeds through an adjacent reality had come under attack from an unknown, hostile entity. Panic had blossomed as each section was cleared out, every sailor from Standard Spacer all the way up to the Captain had vanished.

Wordlessly, Trillian accessed the battlecruiser's last scans as the M'luh Greysana. Everything had gone wild, the readings a mess and near un-decipherable. Trillian had only seen such a messy sensors report a few times in his life and each time it had happened during FTL transit and each time, something had broken through from the Other Realms that all FTL corridors passed between. He had gotten lucky each time, his ship being forced from the slipstream in a hard breach. People had been injured but they had all survived. Unlike this lot.

'The auxiliary E-Shield generator burned out.' Jorst said, cutting through Trillian's thoughts. 'Looks like the feedback shorted the main unit and left them open for attack from... whatever that thing was.'

'Can it be repaired?' Trillian asked even as he queried the battlecruiser. The ship went about its first self-diagnostic in a long time.

Meanwhile, Jorst's drone was busily exploring engineering, having lost interest in the burned-out mess of the auxiliary E-Shield unit. From what Trillian was seeing of it in the still images he had received, the unit had thrown a fire and it had burned itself from the inside out. He sighed. The whole thing would need to be repaired and the battlecruiser's flood of self-diagnostic data confirmed that. There were spare parts in the hold for the generator and he looked up the primary unit. That might be salvageable. All he needed was the one working unit to be active to ensure safe FTL travel. He looked up the shipboard materializers. They were in fine form. A small spark of hope ignited inside him. If the 'matz were still working, then all he'd have to do is redirect the connected rad vents, feed the unit's schematic into the 'matz's computer and wait for the new components to be materialized. Technological conjuration and the Jes'wans had some of the best 'matz units going.

'I think we can fix her up for FTL. We stand a good chance of getting her to a port to have her patched up.' Trillian said. Then he remember the most important things: A, he was penniless. B, he was now in possession of a Jes'wan battlecruiser that had vanished under mysterious circumstances without a peep. Neither of those things was a good combination. He sighed in irritation an wracked his brain for a safe harbour.

'What about Karson's Refinery?' Tasmine said, 'What happens at Karson, stays at Karson.'

'Good idea. What say you, Mister Garlen?'

'I say it's a damned good idea. There're plenty of talented folk there looking for work, too. Now, what're we going to call this beauty?' Jorst asked.

Trillian looked to Tasmine. He was no good at naming things, but she seemed to have a creative streak when it came to such things.

She stared at him in horror, 'You're not asking me for ideas, surely?'

'Look, unless you want to go around in a warship called Kevin, then I should be left out of the naming process.' The tiger said blandly.

Jorst laughed, 'We're under attack from a ship called Kevin! Requesting back-up!' He howled in amusement.

Tasmine smothered a grin as Trillian's head sank into his hands.

'Okay, how about... mmm, what's the Jes'wan word... ah. How about Jin'daal. It's an ancient off-shoot of traditional Jes'wana and means Hunter.' Trillian looked at her and she shifted uncomfortably as his expression became un-readable. 'I suggest it because she's a warship and in Sangaardian society, a battlecruiser is used to hunt other ships that are too big for a corvette to deal with.' She added hurridly.

'I've seen your people's battlecruisers in action. And I must say, Jin'daal is a fitting name for such a vessel. Jorst?' He said.

'I like it. Sums up her purpose perfectly.' He replied.

'Then we are in agreement. This battlecruiser shall be named Jin'daal, the hunter. And regardless of what we do with her, no matter the task, we shall not let her former crew be forgotten.' Trillian announced.

He brought the monitor that the ship's core stats were displayed on and answered its request for a new name. Jin'daal was accepted and it's I.D beacon came back online in short order. Trillian looked at the I.D beacon's transmission and grinned, his heart fluttering in response to what he saw. He was now the captain of a Jes'wan battlecruiser, a ship that bridged the gap between the corvette and the destroyer classes. Her armour was thick and her guns cruel. Her task was to seek and destroy in swift raids, sowing the seeds of destruction as she dropped into realspace, attacked enemy ships and task forces, before diving back into the slipstream, leaving chaos in her wake. Modern battlecruisers were ambush predators and now, he was in possession of one. It was his boyhood dream come true and woe to anyone who tried taking that away from him. He had lost the Ranger and by the gods, he would not loose the Jin'daal. And the Deymarii was staying with him. A sensors corvette retrofitted for Scav work would partner well with such a ship and someone would have to pry control of both vessels from his cold, dead hands.

'We'll need to contact a Jes'wan priest or priestess who's willing to bless her.' Tasmine added. She was back to reading through the ship's last moments as the M'luh Greysana. 'There's no records of her being blessed before being let go from her last maintenance dock. I'm a suspicious woman. I don't want you or Jorst setting foot on that ship until she's been blessed.'

'But I need to go back and retrieve my drone.' Jorst protested.

'It can stay there for the time being.' She admonished him. 'Don't push your luck. Especially now we know what happened to the last crew.'

'Alright. Let's get her cabled up and tow her to Karson. Tasmine, put in a call to Karson's Refinery and see if you can get us a mooring spot for a battlecruiser. Jorst, get back in here. We'll stay linked to your drone. Maybe it'll find something else interesting.' Trillian said.

Tasmine gave him an odd look then took to her task. Trillian ordered the Jin'daal to seal up its quarter deck and prepare for an FTL tow. The moment that Jorst was safely aboard the corvette again, tow cables lanced out from the Deymarii's aft and the battlecruiser was pulled in close to the corvette, the smaller ship groaning under the weight. But once it was in place, docking clamps clinging to the silver-blue hull, the Jin'daal synced its sublight drives to the _Deymari_i's and the two ships were underway, the Tenglaari corvette looking like a chunky pimple that had grown out of the Jes'wan ship's prow.

'There're berths available. The cheapest is Outrigger-two. The owner is willing to rent it in exchange for someone running bodyguard duty for his son for the duration of the stay.' Tasmine said, raising an eyebrow, 'The second cheapest is Cavern-twelve. Owner wants a ride to Brillard Bay once repairs are complete.'

'Who's the son?' Trillian asked suspiciously as he guided them out of the local star's gravity well.

'Thug who upset the local gang lord.'

'Not worth it. The second option. Who's he?'

'A man looking to retire to a tropical backwater planet, without fuss if possible. He's says Karson isn't for him any more and just wants out.'

'I can get behind that. Message him to see if he's okay with having a reclaimed Jes'wan battlecruiser in his hangar.'

'Message sent.' Tasmine said. They sat in silence, watching the bleak view slide past. Tasmine's comms unit pinged. It was a message from the destined retiree, 'He says the floor's open and that he'll see us when we get there.'

'Our ETA is a week. Is he okay with that?' Trillian asked after completing some mental calculations.

Another long moment passed, 'He's fine with it.'

'Excellent. We'll be going into the slipstream in two hours. Mind sticking around to help me keep an eye out for any would-be trouble makers?' Trillian said.

The system was empty, but with so much scrap lying around, one could never be too sure. The last thing he wanted was to run into someone else whilst he had the catch of the century locked firmly in his ship's grip. Scav Law only went so far, especially if desperation had set in. He glanced at Tasmine. She was sitting quietly in the executive officer's chair, studying the readouts. She was still going through the Jin'daal's datacore, glancing at the sensors monitor every few minutes. He wondered if she had anywhere to go.

'Got a destination of your own in mind?' He asked after a moment.

She paused. Shook her head and said, 'No. My family believe me to be dead along with the rest of the Belsaan's crew and research team. People returning from the dead in Sangaardian culture is generally considered an ill omen. It would be best if I disappeared now my obituary is up for the galaxy to see.' She said softly, her eyes downcast.

'It's been nice having some company.' He started. 'You're welcome to stay on as crew if you want. I don't really know the first thing about hydroponics so your skills as a botanist would be invaluable. I don't mind if you-'

'No, thank you. I mean, yes. I would like to stay on. I just don't know about working with plants again... um. Can I think about it?' She said hesitantly.

Trillian studied her dark gaze for a moment then nodded, 'You have a couple of weeks before I, myself have to disappear.' He looked at his navigation screen. They were clear of the star's gravity well and were set for FTL. He made the announcement to Jorst who was still down in the hold running post-flight maintenance on his mech and then both ships vanished into the slipstream in a flash of blue and gold.