Phantom Star

“Okay. Everyone is secured?” I asked, looking around the Phantom Stars hold. Double checking everything was in place.

“We got it Captain.” Old Collin said, speaking formally much to my surprise. “Everything is locked down and ready for the trip. We’re set for travel.” I took the words and nodded, my back straightening as the time was now.

“Alright. We are setting off. Call me through the Crabbit if you need something.” I said, to the small group and I got nods and a thumbs up and a wink from Marie.

I turned and climbed up the ladder, sighing in relief once I was out of the hold and back in the Phantoms holds. I closed the hatch behind me and walked much more calmly up to the bridge.

“Is everything ready?” I asked, my current shoulder Crabbit.

“Yes yes! All ready! Green Green!” It chirped happily and I nodded. Did the Crabbit decide to start using colors for the status of things? I’d have to check with them once we were going to see what they had come up with.

It wouldn’t do to think Green is a good color only for it to mean everything was on fire.

I climbed up into the bridge a few moments later and happily flopped into my uncomfortable chair.

“Alright! Prepare final checks for departure, secure all hatches!” I called out playing into the role, enjoying how the Crabbit all cheered and got to work.

“Captain Captain! Message message!” My shoulder Crabbit who had switched over to comms called out and I slumped.

I did a check on my Tab and blinked. I expected a message from Uncle Kyle, but this was from the Octavius.

There was my anxiety again. I took a breath and let it out. Was he calling to cause me issues? Make demands? I had no idea, so there was no point in waiting and wondering.

I tapped the request, and put it through.

A moment later an image of the Baron was on my Tab.

“Baron?”

“Captain Katherine. I heard you are traveling to Elinai.” He said with faux casualness.

“That’s right?”

“Then I wish you safe travels Captain. This is your first time leaving this system, is it not?”

“It is.”

“Then I wish you to take this.” My Tab chirped and I noticed I received a message from him. “It’s a seal, should any nobility give you any trouble, you can use it to assure them you are working under me for now.”

“I don’t think I’ll need it? I shouldn’t run into any nobility.” I offered in an attempt to deny what he was saying.

“Just in case Captain, just in case. I need you to upgrade the Octavius, so it’d be rather difficult if you end up stuck somewhere. So I’ll make sure no one else thinks they can hinder you unduly.” He explained and I had a feeling there was more going on, but instead of arguing I just nodded and then he nodded back. The comm channel ended a moment after.

Weird.

I shook it off, and with that, all the checks were finished, I sent a request for the airlock to disconnect to UNK-L, and I felt a tremor run through the ship as the Phantom Star was freed.

I didn’t say anything this time, just putting my hands on the Tab controls, giving the nudge to slowly pull away from the station.

Soon I started really pushing the ship and enjoyed the way everything just disappeared behind us. I let that go for a short time to get some distance from the small Moon's gravity well that the station orbited.

Then finally it was time.

“Prepare for jump into subspace!” I called out and the Crabbit quickly started working to get the calculations ready. “And let the cr-Let our guests know we’re about to jump to Warp.”

“Yes yes!” Was all I got in response, and I watched the Tab as the calculations were entered into the Warp Controller. The Controller sent back a 100% response, and so I adjusted myself in my seat and hit the button to dive.

Instantly my stomach felt like I was falling except it almost felt like I was going up instead of down, and the stars disappeared from view, shifting to something else, as we left real space.

It didn’t take long until we seemed to stabilize, and I nodded. “Set route!” I called out to the Navigation Crabbit and watched as it squirmed for a second pushing a few buttons before it looked back at me shyly.

“Route entered! I think!” I nodded, checking it myself and not finding any issues. Pretty straight shot to the system we needed to reach. No crazy astral phenomena in the way.

“Engaging engines.” I said and instantly the Phantom Star was moving at incredible speeds. There was no acceleration in Subspace. You were either moving, or not. And so we rocketed away at such incredible speeds it wouldn’t take long before we left the star system behind, and then only a few days as we traveled incredible distances until we reached our destination.

The Planet Elinai in the Cross Industrial System.

I rested back and just breathed in and out as I felt the Phantom vibrate slightly below me.

The song the ship had was actually syncing with the vibrational hum I was hearing. It was triumphant and eldritch, and that told me nothing was wrong. The ship was loving its trip through subspace, this time without the SDA.

I considered what I should do next. There were three things. Stay here and just be lazy. Get to work on some of the internals that I could fix up, or go visit my guests…

I stood up. There was plenty of cabling that still needed to be installed, and I had most of it dragged on board so we could work while we traveled.

—---

I didn’t have any trouble as I worked. The Crabbit floated around me carrying different parts and pieces as we all worked on prepping for the eventual upgrade.

But hiding away in the bowels of the ship couldn’t last forever.

“Ah! Captain! Big Sis Marie says it’s dinner time!” I stilled as I was clamping down another row of cabling that would eventually power up the laser broadsides…

“Big Sis?” I asked as I looked at my shoulder Crabbit. Its large rabbit ear antenna twitched happily as it nodded.

“Yeah! Big Sis! She’s super nice and even taught us some games!” I sighed as I realized that of course some of the Crabbit had been hanging around the guests, and of course they were probably bored.

Marie and the others had probably been teaching the Crabbit bad habits… But if it was just a game that was okay.

I rose up and stretched, I was feeling a little sore from crawling through the ship all day, and food did sound pretty nice. I had been planning on just eating alone, but if Marie was inviting me to eat with them, I guess I should show up.

I wiped my forehead with the back of my work glove and started heading towards the hold of the ship. “Alright, tell everyone we are taking a break for a little. Make sure they lock down their current project before leaving though!” I reminded the Crabbit who twitched as she sent off the message along their network.

“Yay!”

“Break! Break!”

“Weeeee!”

I heard the shouts of the Crabbit through the ship as I gave them a break. I just rolled my eyes at their silliness. Most of them would be right back to working in like three minutes when the excitement of getting to choose what to do on their break passed and they just wanted to do more fixing.

I slid down the ladder into the hold and when I turned around I was surprised to see a little cooking section had been set up. Marie was passing out some manipulated protein that came out of a reprocessor to look like steaks, and everyone was eating happily.

“There you are! How’s the ship Captain Kat?” Marie asked with a smile as she offered me a plate.

I hesitated a moment, taking off my gloves and sticking them in my pocket, before reaching and taking it.

“Ships fine. We’re making good time.” I added simply. There was a little fold out table and chairs that had been placed in the hold and I walked over noticing there was even an extra chair for me.

“Good. Let us know if you need some extra hands. Otherwise this’ll be a boring trip.” Old Collin offered as he stuck a forkful of his dinner into his mouth.

“Don’t bother. Kat’ll freak out before letting anyone on board.” Marshall mumbled out around his meal, and I noticed he got a swift kick under the table for his trouble, but I was frowning because I wasn’t going to freak out!

I just wasn’t going to let anyone go wandering around my ship! She wasn’t ready!

“I don’t need help, and I don’t freak out!” I snapped at Marshall who rose up from his plate and was about to say something when Carter smacked him in the shoulder.

“Drop it. Not another word.” He snapped at the other boy and Marshall looked mutinous for a moment before turning away and focusing on his meal.

“I don’t need help. Thanks though. Most of it is just setting up cabling and things right now. So you’d just get in the way. The Crabbit and I got it.”

“Understood.” Old Collin said calmly. “We’ll just keep ourselves occupied. Ugh. I never did like ship travel.” He grumbled and I blinked as I looked the older man up and down.

“I didn’t know you traveled before.”

He chewed his food for a bit before responding, which surprised me. I didn’t expect to get an answer. “A few times. Nothing adventurous. This isn’t the first time we’ve needed to send someone to make a deal. I’m a good choice. The lower dock can be closed down for a while without much trouble.”

“Have you ever been on a planet?” Marie asked suddenly and Old Collin continued chewing for a bit before he answered with one word.”

“Yep.”

“Really? What’s it like? Is Gravity really that bad on world?” Marie asked eagerly for more details.

“Not much different. Just wider. It’s the wideness that gets you.”

“Wideness?” Carter prompted this time.

“Yep.”

I waited for a minute and started giggling a bit as he didn’t seem interested in explaining.

“I guess we’ll find out for ourselves.” Carter said after a while. “We’ll all get to see what it’s like to be on an actual planet.” He bit into his food after he said it, and it really felt weird for a second.

I had never stepped foot on a normal world during this life, but I had before of course. So it wasn’t too strange for me, but for the rest of them…

Heh. I’d have to keep an eye on them when we finally landed to see their reactions.

—--

After dinner I had split off from everyone and headed up to my room. The Captain's quarters were just off the bridge, although it wasn’t on the same level as the bridge itself, I popped open the door and sighed at the bare room.

A single door to the bathroom, and basically a completely bare space besides one of the sleeping pod beds. I walked over to it, and slipped in. The beds were kinda strange at first, but they were comfortable. They came out kind of rectangular looking, so they could be pressed into corners. And weren’t just open beds, but were like small rooms you crawled into. Because if something happened and the ship decompressed while you were sleeping you’d be safe.

I stripped off my boots leaving them outside and then peeled my jumpsuit off, slipping my legs out of the bottom half. I usually wore the sleeves tied up around my waist anyways, but finally being free I groaned in delight as I could wiggle my toes and just feel nice and light.

I closed the rolling door that sealed off the pod and was about to get comfortable before realizing I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. I popped the hatch open and grabbed my suit pulling my Tab out of my pocket before sealing it back up. With that I rested back and pulled up the entertainment section of my Tab. Future TV was pretty weird, but I had made some efforts to try and watch it.

Mostly because I kinda wanted to fit in more. It might seem stupid to try and take cultural cues from TV, but most places I traveled weren't going to be my home station.

I would need to improve my understanding of how people acted across the verse if I wanted to travel and see the stars.

Yep, it was definitely cultural training, as I turned on the show and settled in, the vast space opera nobility show wasn’t good. Definitely. Yep.

“Noo! Don’t kill him off, he’s the best character!” I whined into the air as I shook my Tab.

I was just getting into the episode when I got an alert on my Tab.

Groaning a bit I paused the show and slipped out of my bunk, taking a moment to throw my jumpsuit back on so I wasn’t just in my underwear I was tying my sleeves around my waist as I opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” I asked the Crabbit that was floating in the hallway.

“Uuuu.” It whined at me, and I blinked, because usually they’d actually add something to their whines, but not this time.

I reached out and it slipped into my arms, its little arms grabbing onto my tanktop.

“What’s wrong?”

“Lonely.” She whined at me, and I was a little confused, before realizing.

While I had taken a lot of the Crabbit with me to handle the repairs and upgrades and general crew for the Phantom, more than half of them had been left behind to work on the wings.

“Is the network quiet?”

“Uuuu.” I had to fight off a laugh, at how plaintive she sounded.

“Alright, want to stay with me? I’m watching TV. You can share with your sisters.”

“Yes yes.” She said a little quietly, and I hefted the large drone up and into my room. Making my way back to my pod I once more settled in, and set up the Tab to start playing, but this time I had a Crabbit settled next to my pillow, her optics swirling around as the Tab played the show, and I soon drifted off without even realizing.

—--

Traveling through space was incredibly boring.

This is something I had understood mentally, but hadn’t yet really experienced. I had spoken to plenty of spacers traveling through UNK-L. Or well, I had heard their stories. I rarely actually talked to them directly, but the others would and I’d hear what they had to say.

So I really shouldn’t be surprised that my guests were getting antsy.

I wiped a bit of sweat from my forehead, as I stood up. I had spent the last hour dragging cables through the crawl space beneath the hallway floors and this section was now done.

Rising up I was about to head to grab something to drink when the Crabbit hovering over my shoulder beeped at me.

“Trouble. Trouble.” It repeated at me suddenly, an alarm and message all at once. Glaring, I stalked off towards the other side of the ship where the ladder into the hold was located.

As I approached I heard the noise of loud voices, and to my surprise, it wasn’t exactly what I expected.

“C’mon!” Marie whined at the Crabbit that was hovering around her in a semi circle keeping her from moving forward.

“No! Intruder alert! Red Alert! Trouble!” One of them shouted at her, and I watched her roll her eyes and then she noticed me and she perked up.

“Kat! Tell the Crabbit to stop blocking me.”

“What are you doing up here!” I demanded and Marie instantly was on the backfoot from my very obvious unhappiness.

“I’m just trying to stretch my legs a bit! Do you have any idea what it’s like to be trapped in a room with those three?” She whined, throwing her arm towards the hatch.

“Marie, this isn’t a game. Go back in the hold. The rest of the ship is off limits!” I snapped at her. I had expected someone to try during the trip, but I expected it to be Marshall, not Marie.

“Kat. I’m going crazy!” She snapped back which surprised me. “The only privacy I get is during a shower!” She grumbled and then sighed and rubbed her face. “Please just put me in a quiet room for a while? They never shut up. Never. I’ve listened to Collin repeat the same four stories for the last few days. I think he’s doing it on purpose!”

I hesitated but shook my head. “There aren't any other rooms, Marie. I told you all this when you came on board. I fixed up the Hold so you could all be in there and not accidently break something!”

“I might not be the mechanic you are, obviously. But I still took all the courses, remember? I won’t break anything. Black Hole, I won’t even touch anything! Just a quiet room for a few hours, where I can watch my Tab without having Marshall constantly trying to watch over my shoulder, or Carter giving spoilers to things I haven’t seen yet!”

I blinked, almost stepping back at her annoyance. That was… A lot.

I reached up and rubbed at my nose. This was going to be a mess. I just knew it. “If I find some place for you to get some peace and quiet, I’m going to have to do it for the rest of them. That’s not happening. Marshall isn’t going anywhere on my ship.” I grumbled back at her, and Marie looked away, because what Marshall had done, had been a serious faux pas.

“I know… But I’m not Marshall. I didn’t break your trust.” I very pointedly didn’t say anything as I looked her up and down right now, as she stood in a section of the ship I had told her to stay out of. “So please… Don’t blame me for his shit.”

I inhaled and exhaled. I had two options. Find something to help Marie, or tell her to get back in the hold.

There wasn’t anyone to ask advice from, or make the decision for me. I was the Captain. This was my ship.

And despite everything, Marie wasn’t just a guest, but family.

“Okay. Get back in the hold.” I told her firmly and she blinked as suddenly she realized she was looking up at me, as I stepped into her space and guided her towards the ladder. “I’ll figure something out, but right now the ship is still off limits. My Ship. My rules. But I hear you.” I said and she looked like she might want to argue for a moment, but eventually just nodded relenting, and I watched her head back into the hold.

Now to figure something out.

—--

The rest of the voyage was surprisingly quiet. I had, with some help from the Crabbit, set up an area outside of the hold. Just a small room, one I had intended in the future to be a storage room for the much larger dining area, but it was empty for now, so I had set up some space inside and was giving everyone, even Marshall as much as it annoyed me, some time every day where they could use it to get away from everyone else.

Of course a Crabbit was always with them. It wasn’t like I was letting anyone actually wander around, but that suited Marie, as not only would she get her own time, but with one of the boys away it was also quieter in the hold.

That fixed the issue of the tension in the hold, and at least there wasn’t anything they could break in the storage room.

And then it was time.

“Prepare to return to real space.” I called out using the Crabbit to relay the message through the ship, the ship intercom wasn’t installed yet after all.

And then I took a few moments to get ready. And activated the process to leave subspace, this time without the worry about an experimental SDA system shaking me apart.

The transition took a few moments, as we approached the surface subspace and realspace collided, causing a warp eruption and then with barely a rumble through the ship, through the viewport I saw stars.

We were a good bit away from the planet Elinai, coming out of subspace well outside of any protective area. As we settled into realspace the sensors on the Phantom Star pinged out. They weren’t the most amazing sensor system ever made. In fact considering the parts I had used they were probably worse than a normal ship.

Well at least a normal military ship.

The upjumped sensors, my own little Type 4 sensor upgrade, began reporting everything it could see. And boy was it a lot.

The sensor display came alive, telling me just how active the system was. Hundreds of ships were coming in and out of subspace all around us. But of course space was so infinitely big none of them were actually close enough to see.

“Transition complete.” I called out through the Crabbit knowing my guests would hear it, and then I focused on the next part.

I slowly started forward, The acceleration of the Phantom a bit sluggish, as usual, but this time purposefully. Not long after I started moving I received a comm message, and I accepted it.

*This is Elinai Flight Control, to unknown vessel, state designation and destination.*

*This is Phantom Star, Destination is Caskinade City.* I rattled off, and sent over the location data. I waited a few moments as I just kept moving before getting a response.

*Understood Phantom Star. Sending you auto nav coordinates.* I could practically hear the quiet ‘Follow them and don’t try to fly off on your own’ in the man's voice.

*Understood, accepting Auto Nav pathing. Thank you.*

The comm ended without another word, and my computer was sent a rush of data, which I accepted, and the autopilot kicked in, slowing the Phantom Star down even more, and I winced at the more than hour long wait the journey would take.

I guess traffic was bad right now. I settled in just to watch in case I was needed.

Slowly the planet grew bigger and bigger, Elinai was an industrial world. One of the big ones for the sector. The planet wasn’t an Ecumenopolis or anything, but it was absolutely covered in cities. I could see the lights twinkling through the clouds down below as we passed over the night side.

As we grew closer and closer, I started seeing more than just the city lights. Ship lights buzzed around out through the atmosphere and then beyond. Hundreds of them, then more as below the clouds even more lights shot around like tiny ant trails.

The planet was busy. Super busy.

Of course I was getting closer and closer, so I called out once more for my guests.

“We are about to hit atmosphere… It’ll be a good idea to sit down, or hold onto something.” I called out and then settled back in my chair myself.

The first sign was a slight brightening of the Phantom Stars nose. Then a tremor ran through the ship.

She’d be fine. Her armor was more than capable of handling re-entry, and shields were up and working with the deflector dish to make it even more capable… Yep. It was fine.

Great even.

The rumbling grew, and I felt my hands grip the chair tightly, the sound of the ship was fine. The music was normal and happy, but I couldn’t help but remember I had made this ship myself.

And then almost before it started getting really bad, it stopped rumbling and the fire cleared from the front of the ship.

We were in the atmosphere.

Wow.

There was a tugging in my stomach, and a weight on me, that made me realize the gravity plating had switched off. They would only work to keep inertial forces light now, but that still left planetary gravity and it was…

Weird.

“Eeeee!” I heard and looked away thinking something had gone terribly wrong, but then I had to look away and fight back the snickers. The Crabbit on Navigation hadn’t been settled into her position when we hit real gravity.

She was now on her back, flailing limbs and crying for help.

“Relax! I’ll come get you in a minute!” I told her, keeping an eye on the space before the Phantom Star. Then I realized what it meant. “How many Crabbit are on their backs?”

“Uuuu. Lots.” Tactical informed me, and I noticed she was struggling to remain in her seat too.

The Crabbit used Gravity panels to move around. It meant in space they were completely weightless. Even with ship or station gravity, as the gravity panels sort of neutralized each other if used.

But this was a planet. There was nothing for the gravity panels to talk to, and adjust with. And the Crabbit were too heavy under full gravity to really float like normal. All the Crabbit had just been grounded, and most probably hadn’t been ready, they had never felt real Gravity before.

My fault, but thankfully none would be damaged. I watched the one on her back sort of twitch around.

Still kinda cute though.

But I shook that off and focused on the flight path. I was serious about not moving until we were landed, not even to help the Crabbit.

While the Phantom Star mostly used the two Nacelles on the back of the ship to move, it did have plasma thrusters. As gravity engines weren’t as efficient in gravity wells. Those plasma thrusters were what was engaged to give the Phantom more in atmosphere control.

The Gravity engines that moved the Phantom in space were still capable of moving even in atmosphere, unlike gravity panels, but it was even more sluggish than normal, and considering the Phantom was already under powered with only two engines, the in atmosphere flight was…

Well I wanted to stay in the captain's chair in case of any issues.

Slowly I watched as the Phantom flew forward, towards an absolute mess of shuttles and ships that made beautiful trails through the sky of the city.

I was just getting nervous about hitting something, when there was a gap. The flight patterns altered opening a path through. I could see the shuttles or other ships that were flying around me, and I noticed that the Phantom was one of the bigger ships, by a hefty amount. Like a shark floating through a school of fish everything shifted around the Phantom.

Then we were passing by buildings, and I could feel the Phantom's flight grow a bit rocky as the atmosphere changed, wind picking up around the skyscrapers slammed into my ship.

I tugged back on the controls, slowing the Phantom Star even more as I continued to follow the flight pan. The auto pilot took my slower speeds into account as it continued on the flight path I had been given.

Then we came out over a section of the city that had a ton of landing pads, only a small amount of them large enough for the Phantom, and that is where we headed. The engine whine picked up as more plasma thrust was sent down to slow the Phantom even more as we came in and shifted around cutting off more speed before slowing into a hover.

The landing gear were released with a button press on the Tab, and the large feet dropped out of the bottom of the ship only when I felt the rumble through the ship of each leg locking into place did I accept the final descent.

The ship shook a bit as it tried to keep itself still as it slowly dropped down the last dozen feet. Then as if all the effort to get here was just a joke she touched down with a soft sigh as the landing gear compressed, settling the ship into place without issue.

We were here. On an actual planet. An alien world.

I breathed out a sigh of relief.