Voidhop - Chapter 5 - Inevitable betrayal (Patreon)

Branx’s love for the ship only grew as Shirel called in more discoveries. It was even better than chancing upon a vruth plant. Those damn plants were worth thousands of credits per leaf you found and they were said to grow back within a month! This ship’s discovery… it was like having a secret benefactor that gave you gifts like the old tales of heroes. Something that if you kept secret enough you’d be able to get credits upon credits before setting yourself up for the easy life.

He ran his thumb over his chin before reaching into his jacket for a smokestick.

He’d earnt this.

He flicked the tip of the stick along the hard edge of the chair setting it alight. Then he brought it to his mouth and inhaled the sweet vox chemicals. He glanced down at the chair with the attached data pad. Feeling curious he tapped at it, watching the light flicker on before a sequence of code spooled past him. Recognising it as a starting screen even if he couldn’t read the language he settled in to wait.

He mentally reviewed the score.

A voidship. Big win in his column. A Dawn-war era ship? Scratch out that first win and make it bigger. Then there was the internals of the ship. He had no idea what the bronze coloured alloy was made of but it was strong. It had to be dense to not let communications pass through it. It certainly wasn’t old cheap metal from a junkyard repurposed into a corporation’s voidship, that he was sure of. It didn’t have a glaring sheen, or compounds slapped over it to hold it together, but rather a nice reflection that made the place special. It was grand without being too fancy.

But if that had been the case, then he’d have forgiven the ship for its tasteless designers he reasoned. He certainly liked the strange blue lines a pictograms laid out around the place.

This ship had style. He approved.

But it also had other perks.

Like the amazing command deck that actually looked out into the open void. A frankly huge crew quarters, large enough he’d fit at least four of his current clunker of s hip’s crew. That was over a hundred beings! Shirel had mentioned rooms with lots of blaster fire, slag and explosive damage. So not everything was fresh out of the void docks. Whatever had happened here had ended violently.

But no bodies— He took another drag on his smokestick— but there were plenty of reasons for that… but if he heard scuttling or screaming, well, he knew how to get out fast.

There was space to train people though from what he gathered about the set-up. The vehicle bay had promise with the small ship currently docked. He’d have to look it over, but for now, allowed himself a healthy puff of his stick.

The score was huge. Epically huge. People would tell stories of this score in bars across the whole Racles system. All he had to do was play it easy and cash in with the corporation currently holding his debt.

Branx leaned back in his seat, lacing his fingers behind his head. He exhaled a huge cloud of smoke.

Screw going easy though.

He wanted to live. And that meant he needed to take risks.

Speaking of risks, he thought to himself as Shirel stalked into the room. He watched her approach through half-shut eyes. He’d long since learnt to never ever fully shut his eyes with her around. He wasn’t going to disrespect her like that. She’d do something stupid if he tempted her by shutting his eyes.

“Branx! What the Ranger-ridden Gelt system are you doing!?”

“Always with the yelling Shirel,” he said before opening his arms widely. “Hey, can you believe how amazing this ship is? She’s incredible!” He glanced down at the blue icon that lookedllike… He tapped it and a soft chime from the terminal announced a new screen.

“Heh! No locking system it seems?” He touched the screen and was pleased that Dawn tech held up to the modern day with the touch screen feature. He eyed the screen with its odd layout, which he couldn’t understand for the life of him.

“Branx! Don’t play with that! You might set off a trap, or weapons, or vent us into space!” A few of the boarding crew hurriedly thrust their encap systems back on at Shirel’s screech.

Branx waved her off. “Alright, I’ll keep my hands off for now, but this is seriously good, no? Feel like giving an apology for doubting me?”

Shirel only gave him a fiercer glower for that. Branx eyed the large lever that had to be the hyperspace thruster. There was an ergonomic design that called out to him to wrap his hand around it, flick the safety off, and just punch it. He licked his lips and reached out a hand.

Just to touch it. No other reason.

“BRANX!” Shirel shrieked, seeing what he was reaching for. He drew it back and held his hands up. Damn woman couldn’t take a joke.

He sighed, turning his head half towards the new entrants of Shirel’s team that had followed her in. “Hey, crew! I think we’re going to mark this down as a win! Everyone grab a terminal, I want to see if everything at least turns on.” He raised a hand to pre-empt Shirel. “But only turn on! Don’t touch it any more if it does! Nothing after that!”

He pinched off his smokestick and then sat up in his captain’s chair. “Shirel! You take the second’s chair.” He waved a hand to the side where a seat was built into the floor slightly forward and down from his own ‘captain’s chair. He eyed the rear of it, which had an odd line cut into the ground. It looked like a seam in the floor. Perhaps that was an access panel of some sort?

Shirel’s lips curled as if he’d just offered her a turd sandwich. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she bore her teeth.

“I’m not doing that Branx!” she hissed.

He rolled his eyes. “Shirel. We need to see if we can establish comms with our old junk heap. Then we'll see how much mobility we have."

“Branx! This is a Ranger-damned Dawn ship! We’re not going to ‘work things out’ tapping on screens like zygotes! We’re more at risk of setting something bad off!”

“We can’t actually turn our terminals on Branx!” called the rookie who was feeling around the back of the terminal before tapping his screen. Branx frowned at that. His own screen was working; this was obviously the captain’s chair, so maybe he needed to unlock theirs somehow?

For half a second, he thought he saw one of the icons on his screen shimmer.

[Ship core start up?]

[- Oyeah - Onah -]

Branx didn’t think about it as his finger tapped the -Oyeah - button. The lights flickered before screens began to light up around him with descending text that was familiar to his own screen previously. “Huh, look at that!”

“Branx!” Shirel now loomed over him, her scowl firmly set. “Can you be serious!? Stop touching things and get out of that chair!”

“Shirel, you need to relax. This is a huge score; you should be happy.”

She drew a tentacle up and rubbed over her eyes—a bad habit she had there, but one he’d never use against her.

He didn’t like to think about what that meant. Old Jembo had taught the gutter gangs of one-oh-oh-six-oh better than that. He watched her with a neutral expression. When she was done squeezing her nasal passage and eyes she looked at him flatly.

“We need the ship in the best condition we can, so when we get corporate evaluators out here, they will buy it for the best credit.”

“I think that’s a mistake.”

“We’re not flying it planetside! That’s begging for a gang to board us and for us to lose the score!”

“No. Not that. It’s a mistake to sell the ship at all.” He gestured around them. “Look at this Shirel! This is the best damn thing that’s ever fallen into our laps. This is a gift plucked out of the void itself! No one’s gonna get another score like this for a millennium at least!”

Shirel’s nose flapped open and shut as she inhaled. Then she shuddered out a breath. “There are times when you really test me Branx.” She drew up six tentacles and laced them together before adopting a stoic expression.

“There are a number of reasons why that is such, a terrible idea. Possibly your worst yet.”

She raised one tentacle, “The systems are in Dawn era language. No one speaks Dawn outside of freaking Dawn history nerds let alone reads it!”

“The system seems pretty intuitive, actually,” Branx said reasonably, eyeing another icon with text that he almost understood. He tilted his head to take another drag of his stick only to remember he’d stubbed it out.

Shirel raised a second tentacle, ignoring his comment but narrowing her eyes on the smokestick Branx was about to light up. “Mechanics are expensive. We would need highly specialised mechanics for this ship Branx. We don’t have the creds for them.”

“People can learn.”

“The number of pirates, gangsters, and Rangers-be-damned CORPORATIONS!" she roared at him, "That would try to steal this ship should be more than enough reason to sell it fast!”

“Weird ships come to dock all the time. Doesn’t actually mean anything. Just don’t tell em what you’ve got and you’re fine.”

Shirel pointed another tentacle at the crew that were obviously listening in. “With this crew? And furthermore—” Branx ignored her words as she continued to rave about all the reasons why they shouldn’t do it.

She really did have a terrible attitude. They’d have never gotten where they were without risk. You had to roll the dice. He would have kept talking to her but another icon in the centre of the screen shimmered. Again, he felt himself understanding the text. Was the text that intuitive… or was something else at play?

[ Hyperspace jump] - J$# Safe232$# engaged! Deact*&&%]

[Warn @#%!!! Active Engine needed!!!]

He grinned, sitting up before lifting his smokestick, only for Shirel to try slapping it out of his fingers. He juked his hand out of the way, glowering as he raised it to his lips.

“Pay attention!” she snapped.

“I was for the first part, but then you started squawking like you always do. Shirel, when are you gonna believe me on this we need to take more risks. Look at where I get us!” He gestured around them.

She scowled, not having an answer. He might have gotten them into tight spots before but nothing bad he’d done could counter-act a score this big.  “We need to work through this. I know you would have said something about eying something bigger than our guts, but we just gotta be smart about this. We carve off manageable chunks yeah? Now let’s go check out the engines. If we can get them working, I think we might really be able to try my plan.”

He leaned towards her. “I’m trying to live Shirel. Don’t you wanna live?”

“I’m trying to survive first and foremost Branx, like Jembo taught us.”

For a moment, Branx remembered the bad old days of being a street rat on One-oh-oh-six-oh mid-north side. A small world, with small dreams that only went to the next meal, or the next day. A gutter rat couldn’t even see the stars unless they broke the law and got above the sixtieth level of the buildings. People dreamed of scaling buildings there.

Advancement and promotions.

Not soaring. Never soaring. Bad times with small moments of light. Light that came in the form of an old drunk with too much time and a fondness for the nastiest booze on the entire planet.

Branx pushed the old memories away before huffing around his stick for the last breath. “He taught us a lot of lessons. You didn’t learn all of them from what he said though. Sometimes you had to read between the lines.” He flicked a finger through the floating smoke to highlight his words as a gap emerged.

She only stared at him, then her eyes flickered to the side. If Branx hadn’t been looking at her, he would have missed the way her shoulders set themselves as resolve entered her eyes.

Branx didn’t have to turn his head to know the Bosun that she’d been putting her head together with lately was behind him on his right side. A position that was frankly terrible for Branx. He just had to hope they didn’t spring anything here. He hasn’t sure how the bronze chair would hold up. He’d prefer something in the hallways, especially if his suspicions about certain markers along the halls were right.

Time to roll the dice it seemed.

“Let’s go find this engine hey Branx?” Branx gave her a grin. It was conversely the worst and best fake smile he’d ever given. It only underlined how far apart they’d grown that she couldn’t see the falseness shining through.

“Nice! Rookie! Stick around here and tell me if anything changes!” He said as he stood from his chair.

A few eyes moved to Shirel. “I’ll bring a few of the boys with us so we can sweep some more rooms.”

Branx didn’t let his grin falter. Didn’t let them know how the small hairs on the back of his neck were shivering. He kept moving, eyes searching the hall as they exited. He took up a seemingly casual saunter as he walked at the front his hands in his jacket. He even began to whistle. He made sure to look over his shoulder and lean on the side of the hall when they reached a new room.

For all appearances, he was the lazy boss now. Sending in his underlings to sweep potentially dangerous rooms, like some manager at a corporation. The first room looked like a strange, too-clean bunk room. The Bosun identified it as a medical suite with some mechanical auto-docs on the side. Branx let his grin stretch wider as they continued to walk, the picture of a man dreaming about his payday with no other concerns.

He watched more rooms being swept.

They found a room with large lamps hanging from the ceiling of all things with gluxplate like partitions sectioning off areas. Shirel had been rather confused but Branx recall an old data-vid he’d once watched about some of the bigger ships.

“It’s a freaking garden… for growing food in.” He glanced around. “The ship is practically self-sufficient… damn how about that?” When Shirel didn’t comment, he reached out and jostled her, causing her jacket to flap about. “Add some value to it, no?”

Shirel merely grunted. Branx turned away, mentally noting down which hip she had her weapon and that she indeed only had the one cheap Halix-five. Horrible taste, damn weapon cooked off its blasts occasionally and gummed up.

He watched a few more rooms being swept. Noting down the mistakes that kept coming in. Old marine Jembo had been weird about making sure they knew how to breach a room back when they all learnt from the drunk. When they reached the centre once more, Branx gestured towards a latch. This time, he went first. He dropped down the ladder and strode into what could only be the engine room.

“She’s a beaut!” he said, running his hand along strangely normal-looking gunmetal grey drive chambers. He could see the power channels flowing out with thick, see-through pipes with cabling showing in the middle. He spotted a large lever in the centre of four large partitions of the machine that made up the heart of the ship. A quick glance up showed that the energy channels went out above the engine as well.

He heard the feet stomping up behind him. Deciding to act now, he stepped forward, grabbing the lever and throwing it down.

“Branx you—” Shirel's scream of rage was cut off as the room thrummed. A pulse ran through the room, and now Branx felt the small hairs all across his body standing on end for a new reason.

Power pulsed throughout the room. From the first section to Branx’s left, metal began to move. Pistons worked and arms worked up and down as the ship came awake. Then the thrum came again, and the section to the right began to move. Two more thrums sounded and more power filled the air as the ship came to life properly.

Now it was no longer working on what must have been a reserve.

Branx made a note to check the fuel levels, or rather to find the gauge for— He let his left hand stray into his jacket while the other held the lever.

Even with the thrumming of the newly sparked engines, he hadn’t missed the sound of a gun being drawn behind him.

“So, it’s going to be this way, Shirel?”

“...” For a long moment, Shirel didn’t speak. When she did there was almost an amused quality to her words, “Yeah, I think I always knew it was going to end this way, Branx. It was inevitable.”

Branx let out a sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly.

He knew what came next.