<a class="link link--internal" href="https://bluemoonroleplaying.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=83335&amp;pid=2015179#pid2015179"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#dda0dd">Iona Knutesdottir<br/>
</span></a>The St. Anne / Bridge / Space Plus<br/>Morning Watch<br/>Tagged: All<br/><br/>In retrospect the sheep had been the cleanest, least worrisome part of their whole layover.<br/><br/>Iona had still been in the grips of Morpheus when the crew returned, big damn heroes all of them, from their rescue mission.  There had been a little shake up in personnel, not for the better or for the worse just folks making the decisions that best filled their pockets.  Working a tramp freighter wasn't for everyone and there certainly wasn't any glamour to it but it also avoided a lot of the rigidity of a big corporation or, she mentally shuddered, military service.  While Iona knew the military served useful purposes the idea of serving under their command or running her own ship like that made her hair stand on end.<br/><br/>Outside of the bridge screens the twisting, star streaked landscape of Space Plus rushed past, showing the St. Anne's progress but not in any fashion that science had been able to discern.  Millions of records from voyages, some at almost the same time from exactly the same place and destination didn't even look the same.  The eggheads insisted there had to be a pattern to it, a code, but spacers like Iona simply knew it was one of the mysteries of the deep that you couldn't understand, you just experienced it.  A countdown in the bridge rapidly drew down to zero.<br/><br/>And...transition.  The St. Anne winked into existence in normal Space and Space Plus simply ceased to be.  Normal stars replaced the much busier view and Iona waited for telemetry to come back verifying first that there were no objects on a collision course and second that they had ended up where they belonged.  Knowing that anything within light seconds had already been tracked and discounted as a threat, she relaxed the tension in her core and moved away from the helm.  Anything further out would take longer but also offer more chances to dodge, not that the St. Anne was sprightly.<br/><br/>Floating, waiting patiently, she waited until a decent map of the surrounding area came up.  It was empty except for a hard but distant return, a return that absolutely had the signature of a hulk, a ship without power, and she wondered what it was.  Well that could be answered by either knowing where they'd jumped to, how close they were to her intended destination, or by spending time navigating to it under conventional power.  Iona didn't plan to waste time on that unless absolutely necessary.  They were already bleeding credits, having had to jump without taking on their cargo, and were in default of the contract too.  The St. Anne was in dire straits and the last thing she wanted to do was throw credits out as reaction mass.<br/><br/>Light dings refocused her and she pulled up their position report, read it, then read it again and was glad she was alone on the bridge so no one would hear the impressive, polyglot string of swears that came out of her mouth.<br/><br/>They'd misjumped.<br/><br/>It wasn't fatal.  They had enough fuel to make it to any of several destinations from their current location, but it was going to be time consuming and expensive.<br/><br/>"All hands, report to the Bridge.  Yes, this means you in your bunks too."  Iona's broadcast went out shipwide.<br/><br/><hr class="bbc-hr bbc-hr--3"/><br/><br/>"....that's the situation," she finished up, giving her crew the run down.  She'd learned it was better to get out in front of the facts than let scuttlebutt run amok.  "Us, a whole lot of empty, and that hulk out..." she oriented herself and pointed down and to the left of the ship's current facing.  "...that a way.  Records search comes up empty.  There haven't been any battles or incidents out here that I can find, and she's not showing power or comms of any sort.  From what I can tell she's pretty much at background temperatures too.  Scan puts her as, oh, about five times our tonnage so whatever it is she's big and cold and dead."<br/><br/>"Shipmates, I'm almost done for in the coffers," she admitted.  "Not your fault," she told the crew with a special eye towards the ones involved in the mess back at their last port.  "Just is.  If there was an insurance claim on that thing it's probably been long settled.  Either way she's legitimate salvage and there may be enough in it, or possibly in her hold, that I can dig us out of this mess."<br/><br/>Iona paused and played with her long braid before flicking it into a slow spin around the crown of her head.  "Not going to lie.  It's grim work and there's a lot of superstition - bad joss - about messing with a hulk.  Won't blame none of you if'n you think we should mark it and let it be.  Think on it and I'll call you back up in a few hours when we're near enough to make a better decision."