First things first, we need to check for booby traps.
Pirates are notorious for placing bombs and IEDs on their ships to prevent mutinies and hostile takeovers, as well as theft.
They’ve no qualms stealing from each other.
Exie 2, that name is too much.
Let’s call you Beta from now on.
Beta and Exie, we need to search for any traps or bombs.
Check the entire ship for anomalies: any power drains, unnecessary redundant systems, extra heat sources, or anything out of the ordinary.’ They might not have been activated but I’d rather not risk it.
‘Lets completely power down this ship and search for heat sources not anticipated.
My suit is still at full power and O2 so I’ll stay here and keep searching the ship.’ finding the loot.
[Yes, Host.] With that taken care of I can start the search of the ship.
The bridge is much bigger than Bessie’s, at least twice the size and full of seats and workstations for crew.
With a standard crew of 6-12, this must’ve been more cramped than Bessie, but now with just me it will be quite spacious.
There are more consoles and buttons on each of them.
Ugh, I’m gonna have to study operating this ship, although Exie will definitely do most of the heavy lifting, heh.
The captain’s chair is huge, almost the size of a ‘love seat’.
Running my hand along the fabric, I press on the seat cushion.
It’s surprisingly comfortable, not the original.
The bridge screen is smaller than Bessie’s but it seems higher quality, probably from it being a former military ship and 20 years younger.
The Comms Station, Radar Station, and Weapon Station are worn but functional.
Bessie only has one combined Master Station for ease of control by a single captain/crew.
I’ll have to install something like that in the future.
Exie will do most of that for me so I just need a station to monitor and be able to execute emergency commands.
Glancing behind me, the dusty boxes finally get their moment.
With the front bridge search complete, I turn around, intending to search methodically towards the rear, so as not to miss anything.
As I open up the nearest box, it’s full of dull green crystals.
Baby puke green.
Inspecting them closer, they really look a lot like Nutronium Crystals,the precursor to Nutronium Power Rods.
This ship uses a different power source and engine from Bessie.
Military ships need more power and speed than a slow miner.
These Gulwings typically use Nutronium Fuel Rods, which are very energy dense.
Much more power than Hydrogen/Ion Engines, and less likely to suffer catastrophic failure from battle damage.
A punctured hydrogen tank is usually game over for most ships.
The problem is the fuel rods must be purchased and are difficult to make.
The equipment and investment required is expensive.
Box after box of Nutronium Crystals are revealed, and they’re dusty as hell.
These guys must have scored these somewhere along the way and been searching for a refiner.
Not too many refiners way out here.
They could never bring this ship into the inner solar system.
This ship is most likely flagged as a pirate ship and the hidden SHIN readers all around the inner solar system would register this ship immediately.
Nearby security forces would converge and destroy this ship ruthlessly.
Pirates are a scourge.
Purged from the inner system, they roam the lawless asteroid belt and beyond.
I’m not sure how much is required to make a fuel rod, but if 2 boxes make a rod, then this is enough for 10 rods!
Nutronium Fuel Rods usually sell for 50-60k credits and are rated for 50 AU but with efficient fuel management that can be stretched to 70 AU(Astronomical Units, the distance from the Sun to Earth) or more.
Long haul missions are even more efficient, once up to speed the energy requirements are minimal.
While refining these was a problem for the previous owners, it’s not for me.
I bet I can refine these myself with some practice.
Heh.
a twinge of the lips, as a half smile graces my face.
Not bad, not bad.
These guys had a ship full of money and no way to refine it.
Oh the frustration, heh.
Too valuable to throw away, no telling how long they’ve carried these for.
Deciding to call them 500k credits, I move on.
That’s actually worth more than both these ships put together.
The last item in the bridge is the laser I knocked outta that guy’s hand.
Picking it up and inspecting it reveals its just slightly better than a normal laser pistol, but light years better than my non-existent one.
Yep, I went into space without a pistol.
Why you might ask?
It’s kinda useless.
Most space suits include basic protection and the bare bones laser I could afford wouldn’t even penetrate that without multiple hits.
Basically useless.
But this laser is an 8mm which can actually penetrate basic space suits, so I’ll keep it.
Tucking it into my waist, careful not to shoot my dick off, I head further aft(back) and leave the bridge into the corridor.
It’s about 10 meters long with two doors just a few meters back and then 2 more further back before a single portal into the cargo bay, most likely.
One of these first two rooms is the captain’s room, to react quickly to emergencies and alerts.
Checking on the left, it’s a single room with a double bed, desk/chair, and ensuite.
Definitely the captain’s room.
Some shelves with books and personal items stand along the wall.
I decide to check here last and head to the other room across the hall.its a similar sized room but with 2 raised beds with small desks underneath.
Small shelves next to the beds for clothes and personal items.
This is probably the second and third in commands’ room.
The executive officer or first mate is usually second in command and then a staff sergeant in charge of the regular crew.
I ransack the room and find a few thousand credits and some personal items.
Other than that a nice set of boots that don’t fit me and a bunch of knives and daggers fish off the loot for this room.
Finished here, further down the hall we go.
The door on the right, ends up being another crew quarters, but with a set of 3 bunk beds.
Not much privacy in here, definitely the general crews’ quarters.
Just a few hundred credits and some dirty clothes, poor bastards.
The 4th room is a mirror image of the 3rd room but no one is sleeping in it.
Its been converted to storage, and contains boxes and boxes of nutripacks.
Mostly they’re just regulars but a few boxes contain upgraded and premium ones.
Not bad, those will definitely spice up my food variety.
Even Beef flavor gets old after enough time.
In a good mood from the new nutripack flavors, I open the last door at the end of the hall, and its indeed the cargo hold.
“Woah” escapes my mouth as I enter.
It’s huge!
Almost the size of Bessie, it’s 10 meters tall, 12 meters wide and probably 30 meters long.
It can easily hold hundreds of tons of ore, cargo, ships, equipment….
My mind is slowly wrapping around this massive space.
Towards the front are a few tanks of liquid water, oxygen and lubricants.
Rows of space parts and tools fill shelves slightly further back.
And then..
More and more boxes of Nutronium Crystals!!
OMG there must be a hundred at least.
Might be enough to go all the way to Saturn or Neptune and back.
That’s a looonngg way.
This is a ridiculous amount of Nutronium Crystals for these guys to have.
There’s enough raw crystals here to make close to 3 million credits worth of fuel rods!
Where in the hell did they find all this?
And it’s covered in dust like it was sitting somewhere for a long time till they found it.
No matter how much I want to sell these and make a ton of money, keeping them to use sounds best.
Also i can’t shake the feeling that they might have been on a job for someone or were selling these to some big shot.
This could really piss off a few powerful people.
Dangerous people.
I need to think really hard about how to deal with this.
Keeping this stuff is starting to sound like a requirement, the more I think about it.
I cant sell this stuff or even show up in this ship or I’m definitely on someone radar that i don’t want to be, It’s probably 2 lifetimes of fuel, on the bright side.
Heh.
I head through the hold to the last room, the engine room.
It’s clean and well maintained, but you can see some of the parts are cobbled together and not matching but it’s the norm this far out.
You fix it and make it work with whatever you’ve got on hand.
The engine is different from what’s on Bessie.
I check it over carefully, identifying the parts i recognize and wonder about the ones I don’t.
You can see where the fuel rods go in, then follow the lines to the reaction chamber.
Then its a bunch of wires and tubes i don’t recognize.
Guess I’ve got some studying to do.
Further down is 2 spare generators for backup and emergency power.
Good to have those, reassuring.
1 spare is just courting death.
2 is the bare minimum.
Lastly on the opposite side from the spare gennies is a row of battery banks.
Too much is never enough.
They are mismatching and different sizes but seem to work.
Good for you.
That’s about it for the engine room.
Ships seem big from the outside but once inside, they are surprisingly small.
Almost 100 meters long and just 7 rooms.
I’m not complaining, it’s much nicer than Bessie’s accommodations.
Don’t hate me girl, you know I still love you.
The last space is the Bilge or crawl space under the floor.
It’s full of life support equipment and lines and pipes.
It’s gross but necessary so I grin and bare it, heading in.
I can’t be lazy with checking the ship now, almost guaranteed there’s multiple booby traps on here somewhere.
It needs to be thoroughly inspected and I’m the only one to do it.
My life depends on this.
Yep I’m staying on Bessie for now, forget moving over here right away..
Don’t wanna get blown up from a missed bomb or something.
Nothing seems amiss down there so I come back up, that place sucks anyway