Phantom Star: Chapter 41

“Okay bring it in!” I called out, as the Crabbits in a long stream slowly brought in piece after piece of equipment and parts. Stripping the pirate ships was an ongoing affair. There was a lot of equipment I wanted out of both ships for the Phantom Star before I sent them off to be scrapped.

Watching the line of materials slowly inch in, I worked to guide the Crabbits on putting things in the right spot.

Most of this was the goodies coming out of the Flying Prak. All the compressors for the Laser Disruptor system, parts of the EES, and more.

“Be careful with that box, send that up to the armory okay?” I called out pointing at the Flares box. They were basically miniature missiles of their own. Finally getting a look at them had meant I’d instantly snatched them up. 

Missiles weren’t something I wanted to deal with, and now, I had countermeasures for laser technology and missiles. 

Just gotta figure out something for ballistic weapons…

I once more was reminded of the deflector shields I’d picked up. Ugh, those things were still just laying around, trying to figure out how to integrate the tech into normal shields was giving me a headache. 

The screamers were also brought on board. Car sized missiles were designed to mimic a ship. I figure I probably wouldn’t get much use out of them as they were intended. The Phantom Star was just too big, had too big of an emission to properly hide without massive retrofits. 

But… They had some potential, so I decided to grab them. Thankfully, they could be stacked up fairly easily in a container, so that would just be stored in the hold for now.

I’d have to do something soon, my hold was getting a bit full of junk at this rate. 

“Take that up to engineering.” I called out as a stream of Iris Drives floated through next. Most of them had been stripped out by the Scavengers, but there were still drives deeper into the ship that they hadn’t managed to get to yet. 

 The medium that the Flying Prak had used was gone unfortunately, and the Itello’s medium was stolen.

Luckily I still had a few extras, enough to haul both ships to UNK-L. I was still putting that on the back burner, figuring out how I wanted to handle that problem wasn’t something I wanted to think about right now. 

“Captain.”

“Hammond? What is it?” I asked, as the man came sliding down the ladder to the hold. 

“Was checking on Sin. She said the sensors are clear. Nothing is coming to bother us.”

“Oh that’s good?” I was a little confused for a moment, before the look on his face told me more was going on. “Is there a reason she sent you to tell me, instead of just a comm?”

“She wanted me to leave her alone.” He admitted, openly, and I blinked as he glanced at me most of his attention on the Crabbits. “She doesn’t like to talk about the past, I was pushing… I let her have a victory over me to help ease the tension.” He explained gruffly, and I nodded slowly as he watched the Crabbits drop off bits of a laser system.

“Got some plans for them. I figure I’ll beef up the side arrays.”

“Hmm.” He grunted, sounding a bit doubtful. 

“They aren’t the best, but they’ll still fire.”

“Why not get something better? You have the creds.”

“But I have perfectly good lasers right there.” I waved at them and he sent me a look. Okay so they weren’t like, perfectly good. Modest at best… “More lasers are better?” I offered a bit weakly.

“Can the power system even handle that?”

“This is my baby, watch what you say. Can she handle a few additional lasers? Pfft!” I scoffed, looking away from him.

She could, but he was right about the other half. Why settle for systems pulled out of a pirate ship when I could just pay for something better?

I felt my hands twitch a bit, but that would be such a waste, I could probably just sell these lasers off, but they weren’t worth much, but they were fine!

Just fine though.

“Maybe use these for a point defense turret? I have been meaning to build something like that.”

“Point defense is good. Missiles…”

“Yeah… I got flares!”

“Hmm.” He grunted, sounding pleased with that. “What’s the plan?” He asked and the sudden change of topic caught me off guard.

“Plan?”

“What are we doing next?” He prompted and I frowned. 

“I need to get the ships to UNK-L… I don’t really want to head home though.”

“So don’t.”

“The Crabbits will need to pilot the ships, can’t leave them.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Why not just have them shut down until you get back. They’re AI, but they are still machines.”

“Yeah but… No. I won’t do that to them.” I decided instantly, shaking my head. “So I guess the next stop is back to UNK-L. It’ll take a few weeks to finish the upgrades on everything anyways.”

“Buy new equipment then, before we get there.” He offered, and I had to consider it.

“With the War going on, that’ll be hard.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t disagree. Instead I looked behind us. “Maybe time to get the cargo elevator working then.”

“That would be nice.” He agreed. Yeah he only barely fit through the ladder access. Hammond was a big guy. “You need to hit another yard?”

“Maybe. The Laser Disruptor is mostly internal, I can use another system, but the EES would need a serious refit, and the Flares need external installations.” I muttered, ticking off the ideas in my head. Then I sighed. “It just feels wrong to head home already. We just left.”

“Maybe look for a few jobs in between, if you are worried?”

I just shook my head. “It should only take a week at most to get most of it installed. Besides, we took some damage in that last battle. Probably best to get everything sorted out first.”

“Hmm.”

“You okay with that? Taking another break?” I asked him.

“You pay me. I do what you want.” He reminded me, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at his deadpan words.

“Right, right. Okay. Let’s get this sorted, I’ll check the Iris Drives on the pirate ships, and we can get moving.”

Hammond nodded, looking out over the hold as the Crabbits floated more and more junk inside. 

I really needed to sort this out.

—--

I grunted as I finished torquing in the bolt. 

“Okay double check that for me.” I asked, and the Crabbit on my shoulder floated to the bolt checking all the connections.

I’d considered working on a few things first, now that we were back in subspace on our way back to UNK-L I knew there was one thing I absolutely had to get finished first. 

Telling Hammond and Sin that parts of the ship were off limits for a bit. I set to work. It really wasn’t that hard. I already had the main parts of the dang thing. I just needed to get the hydraulic movers installed, properly place the support structure, and power the motors to move the elevator up and down.

Piece by piece it all came together. This was the forth strut, so I nodded. 

“Okay let’s check the mobility.” The actual walking platform of the freight elevator was already there. I just adjusted the flooring on the second floor using the Nanopaste to cut the flooring free and adjust the entire plate to what I need. 

The four hydraulic rotors that would support the elevator rolled down, to the bottom without issue, then up in time. It worked, but let’s hold the excitement until we’d tested it under weight.

“Okay let’s bring the floor plating down.” I called out, as the four Crabbits holding it up out of the way slowly brought it down. The installation went quickly, the four rotors were locked in. I went around and checked all four of them, making sure everything was properly secured.

Then I got the hell out of the way.

“Okay bring it down.” I called, and the Crabbits activated the elevator. It lowered all the way to the hold, securing itself in the nook that it was designed to rest in. No issues! “Okay bring it back up!”  The entire floor lifted back up until it reached the top, then locking in place. 

Only a centimeter gap in the flooring even showed that there was an elevator in the room at lal.

Which was actually a problem.

“We did it!” The Crabbits started cheering as I nodded accepting it was done.

“Yay! Elevator!”

“Yeah Elevator!... Why do we need an elevator?”

“Dummy! Now when we are in gravity we can get up to the second floor!”

“GASP! We aren’t trapped anymore!”

“Freedom! Freedom!” The Crabbits all spun around in the air chattering and cheering and I had to snicker a bit at some of the comments. They really were developing quite well.

“Okay girls, we aren’t done just yet.”

“Aww. Is it broken? I thought it worked!”

“No, it’s not broken, but we still have to follow the important next steps… We need to mark the edges of the elevator so people know where it is. So who has… The red paint?” I asked, knowing what that would bring.

“GASP!”

“The Red!”

“Red! We need red!”

“I got it!”

“Ahah! I knew you took it!” The Crabbits with paint sprayers started fighting and I swiftly ran over to break them up.

“Hey hey! Easy, no fighting… Especially when you have those sprayers. I don’t want to have to clean my ship.”

“Uuuu! But they stole it!”

“I didn’t!” The two snapped at each other and I just held them apart. Thankfully they didn’t resist much.

“Okay why aren’t you sharing the red paint?”

“Only one red paint!” One of the others flying around called out as she passed, watching on like this was a drama.

“Yeah yeah. Only one! Too much red is bad!”

Huh. I had to wonder where this was coming from, but it did mean that I would have to step in.

“Okay, you both like painting, and you both can’t be the red sprayer at the same time. So it means you each need to take turns. One of you can do this project, and the other gets the red paint until they have to spray something next, and then back… Okay?”

“Aww. I wanted to spray the Red.” A third Crabbit called out, and I slumped.

“Okay we’ll set up a rotation.”

“But that means it’ll be forever!” The Crabbit in my arms that currently had the red sprayer cried out… Literally, she was making whining bawling noises.

“I think you watched too much TV if you are acting like that.”

“Aww. That worked on the shows…” She trailed off, her crying instantly over as if it had never been there. 

“We’re going to talk about you taking too much information from TV shows after this.” I informed them, causing all of the Crabbits around me to slump a bit. Which was unfortunately telling. “Go ahead and get the markings painted so we don’t accidentally put something on the edge of the elevator.” 

My order got them moving as the red paint sprayer Crabbit went to work humming happily as she made a weird sort of stylized marking around the edge of the Elevator…

Well as long as it was marked properly, I didn’t care what it looked like.

Then I stepped back and just looked over the room… I finally had an elevator! That made me pretty happy, although… “I’m going to need to put up some kind of barrier so we don’t fall or something huh?” 

Most of the floor of the room went up and down, and this was the room attached to the air locks. So… Not the best design. But I needed a freight elevator to move from the hold to the airlocks, and-

I shook it off. 

It was my ship, and it could be a death trap if I wanted! I didn’t want it to be a death trap!

“Okay I’ll need to install some emergency gravity panels in the elevator shaft, to keep anyone from falling.” I decided. So there!

But that was another project that would need to go on the back of the list, I had other things to worry about.

The mess room to the bridge elevator, was also on today's docket. The poor Crabbits didn’t deserve to be stuck on a section of the ship whenever we were in Gravity, plus I was kinda getting sick of all the ladders.

I walked back through the mess, still finding it empty as I headed towards the small elevator space that led to the bridge. It had honestly just been left open for now since I hadn’t had time to make it.

“Okay bring me the parts for the elevator, let’s get this one done!”

“Yay!”

—--

The Phantom Star returned to real space in a riot of colors. And I relaxed at the familiar sight of UNK-L.

Behind me I heard the elevator doors open, and couldn’t help but grin as Sin walked onto the bridge, munching on the remains of her breakfast as she took her seat. 

“Glad you made that elevator, ladders suck.”

“It is nice, right?” I agreed, practically chirping. Every time I added something to my ship it made me happy.

The comm system chirped as we got a message from the station, and I accepted it from my chair and grinned. 

“Well look who it is!” Marie said from the vid call, and I grinned at her. 

“It’s me! I got two ships that should be transferring into the system in a few hours as well.”

“More? You okay?”

“Perfectly. The Phantom Star got a scratch, but that’s all cleared up. I’ll tell you the whole story over a meal?”

“I’ll let Uncle Henry know to make your favorite, sending you docking clearance?”

“Yeah I don’t have anything to transfer, just an airlock is fine.” I got an update for one of the docking collars, and Marie winked at me as she was just about to sign out. 

“I’ll let your parents know.”

Then the call ended. I just rolled my eyes.

“Still weird. I didn’t get along with any of my cousins.” Sin mentioned as I was slowly pulling the Phantom Star into position to dock.

“Do you have a lot?”

“Some. Planet I’m from, the families gather together. Farms need people to run them, so we all get bunched up. Hated most of my family.”

“Sorry.” I said and she scoffed.

“It’s not something to feel bad about. They were the worst, and I’m glad I got away from them.” She brushed her red hair away from her face almost like she was trying a bit too hard to seem unconcerned.

“Hmm.” Hammond uttered and Sin startled, nearly jolting in her seat. 

“Ugh. Put a bell on you old-” She cut herself off as she sent him a glare and turned back to her console.

He was fairly quiet for a big guy. 

“Your cousins were worried about you last I spoke to them. Maybe a message, to let them know you aren’t dead, or a pirate anymore.”

“Pass.”

I pointedly turned away from the family drama. I would likely be dealing with my own soon enough and didn’t need to get in the middle of this one.

—--

I felt a bit nervous as I settled into a spot.

It wasn’t just Marie that had wanted to hear the story of another two pirate vessels being dropped off. 

While the first few hours of my return had been normal, talking to Uncle Kyle about what I was doing and how long, seeing my parents, and having some time just with them, now I was up at the hab, sitting at a table in front of Uncle Henry’s little restaurant, and I noticed close enough he could hear.

And then half the station it felt like was milling around.

It was seriously making me anxious.

“Alright so spill Captain Kat!” Marie demanded with a bright grin as I looked around.

“Why so many people? This is totally something you did.” I whispered to her, and got a few laughs as I wasn’t quiet enough. 

“Well I told Heather, and she told-”

“I get it.” I interrupted as Heather beside Marie gave me a similar grin.

They totally did this on purpose.

“Okay fine. So when I left I intended on going out for longer. Just doing some transport jobs, and everything was going well, until I decided to take a shore leave on a planet.”

“Oooh!”

“Well it was a planet called Connorsday, and it was… Awful.” I started, letting my voice carry no matter how nervous I was. Everyone was listening so I might as well share now, so I wouldn’t be attacked around every corner for the story later.

As I told the story though I felt myself relaxing, and laughing at some of the stupid shit I had to deal with.

Conner was… Quite the character.

“So… The whole planet stinks?”

“Yeah the atmosphere is like gooey, it’s gross.”

“Eeeew!” I laughed at Heather's reaction and there were a few uncomfortable faces in the crowd. 

For a bunch of station brats, the idea of a planet’s atmosphere being like that was horrifying. 

“Yeah I don’t think I’ll be going back there ever again. And I’ll do a better job checking what planets are like before offering shore leave again.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Sin called out, as she walked up, and I noticed quite a few of the boys already had eyes on her. She sauntered through and took a seat beside me as she plopped down. “Honestly the atmo was terrible, but the bunkers down below were alright, and there was a massive night life. The clubs were fun, and the music had a real nice beat.” She explained, and to my surprise her words had an interesting effect.

“That sounds awesome.”

“I wish I could go to a club!”  Heather whispered, and I shot her a look. 

She was just a kid and definitely didn’t need to go to some grungy club!

“You didn’t tell us about fun parties Kat.” Marie said, pouting at me, and I scowled. 

“She didn’t go. Captain Prissy stayed on the ship most of the time on the planet.”

“I’m not Prissy!” I denied gasping in offense, and Sin just grinned. 

“You had a whole planet to explore, and instead of checking it all out you stayed on your ship.”

“I like my ship.” I mumbled, but Sin did kind of have a point. “And I found a job! I walked around!”

“Your interest in that skeezeball, aside.”

“I do not have an interest in Conner! He’s a scumbag!”

“Uh-uh.” Sin offered casually, and then Marie was grinning that smile of hers.

“Oooh, did Kat have a crush on a scumbag trader?” Marie asked, not helping!

“I did not! He’s gross!”

“He kept calling her his angel.”

“No!” Marie gasped, and then I heard a loud booming voice called out that made me flinch.

“He called her what!?” Dad called out in a baritone as he pushed through the crowd. “She didn’t mention this!”

“Cause it’s stupid, and I kept telling him to stop!” I argued, but Sin was smiling and I knew she was just stirring shit for fun.

“Oh yeah every time, she even took on a weird job to help the guy, the pay wasn’t even that good or anything.”

“Stop lying!” I screeched and reached over and shook Sin who went a little floppy as I shook her to try and stop the lies from falling out!

It was nice to be home.