The Cat's Cradle of the Maker of Ways
Posted on Fri Jun 28th, 2024 @ 3:05pm by Captain Mrazak & Shamus O'Tool
735 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
S1E6: Where Skies End
Location: Stygian Traverse | Gamma Quadrant | Limbo System
Timeline: MD 5
“Maker of Ways, thank you for providing such guidance as this. Scopes, tell me I ain’t seein’n ghosties?”
The Breen at the sensor console tweedled and beeped, and went to work on their controls. The one beige armoured form of a standard Breen trooper armour was now a scrimshaw of new and old parts. Many of the latter are hand-made and patterned drastically different to what was there before. A collection of fairy tale stars glittered on one pauldron, whilst on the other a ghostly form was picked out in abstract welded seams.
“And don’t go getting all factual and analytic on me,” the man speaking was self-confident enough to consider himself ‘rakishly handsome’. He was also devoid of a self-reflective ego that would have made others quail at such personal vanity, but Calvain had never been one for such introspection. Like the old Rish saying he sang at every opportunity ‘Give me a tall lass, another one’.
Calvain scooted from the piloting couch and hunched over the sensor console, jabbing at the screen with ring bedecked fingers.
“See you’re focusing on all the wrong things. No one’ll care back home about the tritanium alloy and deuterium stowage capacity. Look, see? There, and there…extra RCS thruster ports, hidden be they. And look, that doesn’t look like a standard impulse drive set-up. If the lack of a visible name on the hull and livery on her nose wasn’t enough of a clue, this thing looks delightful cutting edge,” he stood back up in the cramped little command module. “I reckon this’ll settle our debt with the king, maybe go some way to gaining us favour with the Fiddlers lot?”
The Breen, Calliope was her name, tweeted something short and sharp.
“Yes, I meant ‘our’ debt. We’re crew! Boon companions united by the binding strands of fates as any Rish would want to be,” he slapped her chair on the back. “Now, life signs. I want to make sure my new salvage is not haunted. If so there are those weird monks who stare into the abyss who might be able to do something about it. Probably leave the place smelling like the inside of a Gazers' den after the smoking's done.”
Calliope snorted a sour note, and her gloved hands went to work.
“No life signs?” Calvain asked, only to be rudely beeped at. “No ‘confirmed’ life signs. But let’s face it, they came in into Limbo from the wrong way around and with an ill wind in the form of that comet. But they’re misfortune could be ours. Hey?”
Calliope chose silence.
“Well, I’m sold. Now let us dock with it. Could be like that Syndicate barge that drifted through her four years back, just freeze-dried bodies and a blown main bus that needed tripping back into place. Sides, like any good salvager it’s always best to grab the expensive-looking portables first.” Calvain grinned, before swinging his lanky frame back around to the pilots couch. “I can feel it, Calliope! This is our good fortune, you watch my words! Its like my ma’ always said: bountiful opportunities are made more than they are given!”
He looked back over his shoulder as he goosed the engines.
“Let's go make a fortune!”
The Rish prospector Fortuna looked less like a space going craft and more like an insurance scam with an engine on one end. From its over sized impulse drives, to a stubby beak like command module, manipulator arms and clamping legs were curled under it like a crab. And if cancerisation was not enough, it was painted in garish reds and yellows with blue thrown in to offend the other end of the spectrum.
Powerful mismatched spot lights played over the disabled Federation vessel, showing off the light damage from impact with the comets tail. It had been sheer luck that one should hit had scratched the hull enough that the Fortuna’s sensors had detected anything looking like a ship. What ever it was, this damaged ship was a stealthy little something.
The prospector latched onto the port nacelle, the clamps having to dig into the hull as magnetics seemed to bounce off the hull. The airlocks met, and the Fortuna’s began the dance of providing minimal power and air to the outer hatch.
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