Chapter 1: A Lucky Find

[Reverend Del]

"It's wreck, you hauled a wreck all the way out here. what the hell do you want me to do with it?" The gruff voice snarled. The owner of the voice, a grizzled old man, long grey hair tied in a scraggly pony tail, even scragglier beard looked at Reynolds.

"I want to know if you can get her flying again." Reynolds wondered why he'd come here of all places, Pittsburgh was practically dead, and yet this musty old codger continued to hang on to his salvage yard like it was gold or something.

"Flying, probably. But I'll need the original specs for it, and I can't gaurantee nothing. She's tore up pretty bad."

"I can see that, old man. I'll see what I can do about the specs, I haven't seen a ship like this before."

Reynolds returned to his crew and appraised them of the situation.

"She'll fly again, but how well the crusty old fart won't say, says he needs the original specs to get her back working again. Any body got any ideas?" He looked round at his crew. None of them said anything for a while and then his newest recruit piped up.

"Umm, I may be able to get something, I've got an old friend who went to join the Hackers after they farmed our jobs out, he's only a low level member but he may be able to help." Grey, a former weapon systems engineer at Baltimore, worked as the defacto enginneer for the whole of the Train.

"See what you can do, meantime we'd best pick up some cargo at Manhattan and hit the lanes, boys and girls. Sorenson check the holds and see if we've still got those old Hornvipers knocking around back there. If she'll fly I'd like her to pack a punch."

Four days later and another few million credits in the bank, Grey called into the bridge. "My buddy says he's got something, wants us to meet him the other side of the Bering jumpgate."

"Send him a message, we'll be there once we've unloaded this food at Manhattan and picked up some more idiots who want to fly out to Rheinland, Guillamme, get the pods fitted out for passenger travel ASAP, I want this turnaround fast." Reynolds sat back, finally he'd find out what this ship was and then maybe he could fly her, try and get Interspace to contract him for some exploration work. The guys could handle the Train on their own for a little while, Sam was a good pilot. No room for showboating when your bird turns 360 degrees in a small lifetime.

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"It's a Raven Claw heavy fighter, LSF use them for super secret ops apparently, not heavily armoured, you'll want to upgrade that as soon as possible, but heavily armed. The reason we couldn't scan her was the paint and design of the ship is designed to make conventional sacnning beams just bounce off. Can gaurantee Mil and LSF'll be able to look see, though. Anyway we've got full specs and loadout stats for this thing, I take it we're heading to Pittsburgh after this run?" The Hacker would only talk to Grey and then he wanted a million credits for his effort. Reynolds considered it worth it, this might be his ticket to a bit of freedom.

"It ain't a thing it's a ship, and yes once we've returned to New York, we'll dock with Manhattan, and head on over to Pittsburgh. Give these specs to Fuller."

Rheinland was busy, RM ships everywhere, he'd had to stop off at Bonn for a brief while whilst the Military dealt with a 'High level threat'. Reynolds was glad they only hauled kosher cargo these days, trying to haul illegal goods would have been impossible in this climate.

"Stand-by Interspace Alpha 16-1, we're scanning you're cargo for contraband"

"You're clear"

Of course he was clear, he hadn't hauled anything illegal since he'd landed this gig for Interspace, wasn't worth it anymore. Quick stop at New Berlin, refit the pods to haul cargo again. Fill up the Train with crates of diamonds and head out for New Tokyo and those stuffy arsed Kusari. He headed for Franfurt, he'd found that he could avoid most of Sigma 13's pirate poulation just by heading via the trade routes, they tended to congregate round the jumphole to New Berlin and leave the tradelanes clear.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, a small donation to the UoG for safe passage and they were flying to Manhattan once more.

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Saint Del is considered a holy healer of diseases of children, but also as a protector of cattle.