Flash Fic: Gentlemen of Fortune

Pandit groaned as his hand came up to try and damp the raging hangover. He'd been on ragers and benders before this, but blackout drunk was an experience he could recall the aftermath of on one hand, and still have fingers left over.

"Vorl-Oq, dim the lights," he groaned.

"Bridge illumination down to 20%," a melodious and obviously synthetic voice replied.

Pandit's eyelids snapped open. The voice wasn't that of his first mate. In fact, it wasn't from any of his officers or crew. And it was a good thing the illumination had been reduced. It didn't aggravate the hangover, but it did cause a bolus of panic. If this was the bridge, it wasn't the bridge of his beloved Saber Nebula. "Where the hell am I?!"

"You are on the main bridge," the synthetic voice replied. Pandit nodded slowly as he looked around. The compartment was bigger than the Saber Nebula's entire engineering section. And the air didn't smell like an outsized crew had been stuffed into the ship for six months longer than was probably safe. For the first time in his life, Pandit recognized the smell of a ship fresh from the builders. Unlived in, barely past its acceptance trials.

"The main bridge of what ship?" asked Pandit, trying desperately to dredge up a memory from the night before.

"The Straslund Free Navy Ship Deguello. Formerly, the Kulverkian Imperial Navy Vessel Emperor Herefrel's Discord."

"Signal all hands. Assemble on the main bridge immediately!"

It took a few minutes, but the crew (what there was of it) assembled on the bridge. All of them looked as slackjawed and dumbfounded as their captain.

"Vorl, how much of last night do you remember?" Pandit asked, a glass of water in one hand.

"Uhhh, less than I would like to admit to you, Skipper." The Dviqh first mate looked acutely embarrassed. "The last really clear memory I had was us docking at Whrendai Station and heading to The Dark Star for a round."

Pandit sipped some water and nodded. Whrendai Station was technically a neutral port, occupying an "empty" junction point in the vast web of stars connected through warp links. Saber Nebula had been raiding commerce near Kulverkian space. "Rest of you remember that far back?" The others nodded. "Somebody remember anything past the first round at The Dark Star?"

"Mostly, Skipper," piped up Mhennlish, the Neormahn logistics officer and the biggest single member of the crew. "We were having a round, laughing and relaxing. Then those Imperial Navy cseychki showed up. They didn't realize who we were and they were feeling punchy. So they challenged us to a drinking contest. Four man team, last hand standing wins all. As the challenged party, you got to choose the drinks." He smiled thinly. "The Everclear was an inspired choice."

"I seem to be recalling that part vaguely. It's what came after that's non-existent in my memory."

"Well, the Kulverkians were kinda sore losers. They tried to slug it out with us and...well, they were not a credit to their Navy, their Empire, or their Emperor."

"S'true, Cap'n!" chimed in Aelin, the diminutive Preled chief engineer. "Heck, they averaged a meter and forty kilos on me and I dropped two of them!"

Pandit gulped down more water. "And then?"

Mhennlish resumed the story. "Things are more fuzzy after the fight. I remember grabbing the pinnace that the Kulverkians came in on and it had a pre-programmed course and flight plan. We all piled in and kicked in the autopilot."

"To where?" growled Pandit.

"If the builder's plate here is any indication," Vorl-Oq said slowly, "Empress Blagrhona Shipyards, Kulverk Prime."

"The Empire's biggest shipyard?! How the hell did we get aboard this ship without getting shot?!"

The ship's AI spoke up. "Imperial Navy protocol requires all ships in the yard to remain unmanned until formally activated and first boarded by the duly designated commanding officer."

"So what happened after that?"

"You identified yourself as officers in the Straslund Free Navy. Under numerous interstellar accords, you claimed the ship as a legitimate prize due to ongoing hostilities between Straslund and the Empire and subsequently assumed command. Your authority has been duly recognized under existing law and we have been underway on a return course to Straslund for the past nineteen standard hours."

Pandit looked completely shocked. He and his crew technically did hold commissions in the Straslund Free Navy, but they were generally considered to be a polite fiction. They were privateers, not pirates, at least from a legal standpoint. "Vorl, what type of ship are we on?"

Vorl went over to a console and slowly typed on the data entry keys. "Captain, you're never gonna believe this. This is the lead ship of the Imperial Navy's new Typhon-class dreadnought. Ten megatons displacement, kilometer and a half long, four hundred meter beam. Forty missile tubes in each broadside, fifteen gun phased particle cannon turrets with forty meter apertures, variable KEW packages, and enough point defense to blast anything moving at less than light-speed into their component quarks. She's an industrial tanker of bad medicine!"

"And she's all ours," Pandit said breathlessly. 

(This piece originally appeared on r/humansarespaceorcs)