Over the next hour or so, the team gets Akamu's problems sorted out - while the airlock and the sensors can't be fixed without repair facilities, One-Ton and Max do get the bridge displays back into shape. Angel, Semo, and the shipboy can't find anything else glaringly broken. With Swims-the-Black resting comfortably in one of the auxiliary bridge crashers, Luis points the freighter towards the shadowport Jang-xur with an ETA of six hours.
"Jang-xur unfortunately does not have a personal Gateway that I am aware of," Swims communicates. "The damage the General took can be repaired and we can offload the cargo. We'll also need to hack our ID transponder before we get in range of their traffic."
As it turns out, Max has a transponder virus ready to go from before the team ran the blockade. All he needs is a name for the ship.
Max quickly reprograms the transponder while Luis powers up the cruise engines for the long flight. Unlike the other burns, this firing is well within the gravitic impellers' ability to handle without locking everyone down in crashers again. The Morningstar still rattles and bucks, but it's more freight train than rodeo.
The rest of the trip passes quickly. The team catches up on their sleep deficits, changes out field dressings, and helps One-Ton with minor repairs as well as cleaning the blood and brains off the bridge. The bodies of Kovos, Clay, and Yaris are spaced without much comment - "an unfortunate necessity", as Swims calls it, explaining that showing up in any port with dead bodies would negate the entire point of swapping their vessel transponders.
The Ossogur Nebula swallows the Morningstar. It's not foggy like you expected from the movies, but there is definitely a difference. It's like looking up at a clear sky on a humid night in the suburbs; fewer stars are visible overall, and they twinkle as massive flows of interstellar gas obfuscate their distant glow.
Max, according to Swims' orders, is broadcasting on a certain frequency. About 5 1/2 hours into the trip, an automated navigational signal locks on to the freighter and overlays its current telemetry over Morningstar's data. Jang-xur is close.
"Shadowports are testament to the Imperium's mistakes," Swims-the-Black explains. "In Jang-xur's case, when the original Gateship was dispatched, Imperial scopes no doubt reported the possibility of habitable worlds. In the centuries between the Gateship's departure and its arrival, something scoured this system of its planets and created the nebula we are in now. The Gateship arrived, found nothing, was abandoned, and was eventually found by... well, no one knows for sure, but hundreds of pirates, brigands, and worse claim to be descended from Jang-xur's founding fathers."
When he's not sleeping or following orders, Semo spends his time cleaning up the combat debris. Even with a shadowport, it wouldn't be good to have blood and guts all over the ship.
Admiral Duck Sauce
