Captain Parrott: Space Buccaneer

Part 3: Fleet Sweet Fleet

As was tradition, Parrott gathered the department heads on the bridge in full regalia to watch the flotilla come into view. Being a warship, the Revenant lacked outward facing windows, but the bridge's holo projectors, and those in the various recreational areas, served as a more than sufficient substitute. Watching the ragtag array of ancient craft coalesce from a tiny dot brought gasps even from long time mariners. Parrott always felt her heart swell at the sight. These fragile specs of dust drifting through the void were all that was left of home.

"Ain't it a sight?" she said and the officers echoed murmurs of agreement. Among the drifting mass were supply ships, agricultural ships, manufacturing and processing ships. And at the center was the Atlas, the largest ship in the flotilla and its only warship, which coordinated traffic across the fleet and served as the seat of government.

"Captain, we're receiving a hail from fleet control," Polly reported.

"Put 'em through."

"Aye aye captain." The crisp, clean audio that Parrot was accustomed to was replaced with a static-laden radio connection.

"Approaching vessel, this is fleet control. Please provide identification and state your intentions."

"This be Captain Parrott of the warship Revenant. Identification code 447822. We come bearin' oxygen fer the fleet."

"Roger Revenant. Identification code verified. Please report to bay 6 on supply ship Caffeinated Squirrel. Technicians will be on hand to receive your cargo. Sending flight path now." A curving white line appeared with time stamps indicating the path they should take through the fleet to avoid disrupting traffic.

"Thank y' sir. An' may fortune smile upon y'." She could almost hear the operator sigh as they signed off. At first the fleet operators had found the pirate routine entertaining but as Parrott had grown into a prominent and controversial figure the joke quickly wore thin.

"Polly, set us on the prescribed course an' follow it t' the letter. Wouldn't want t' cause trouble fer the locals." The course they'd been sent was agonizingly slow but in a flotilla this large where almost all ships were flown manually it was the best that could be managed safely. Humans just couldn't keep up with AIs in terms of spatial awareness and reaction time. There was a reason most species with AI tech had banned manual flight entirely. On the flip side, those bans were the reason that the human fleet was able to get their hands on these ships in the first place.

As they drifted through the hodgepodge fleet Parrott caught a glimpse of a newer ship docked with the Atlas. She quickly rewound the bridge holo and zoomed the view in to get a closer look.

"That's a Temic ship," Pierre cut in. "Lookin' pretty new to. Wonder what our benefactors 're droppin' by fer." The remainder of the journey was consumed by this discussion. Not having any planets or useful resources of their own, the flotilla rarely made diplomatic contact with the wider galaxy, and even then an in person meeting was extremely uncommon. The Temic Nation may have prevented humanities complete extinction but they had their own problems and had mostly left humanity to fend for itself. The common theory among Parrott's officers was that the Temic had gotten tangled in a war and were looking for help moving civilians but she didn't buy that. There was little the human fleet could do that the Temic couldn't do faster with their own ships.

At last they reached the Caffeinated Squirrel, one of the flotilla's larger ships which served as a distribution point for raw materials, and began docking procedures at bay 6. On the holo display Parrott noted that some of the Squirrel's crew were out in space suites waving glowing rods to help guide the Revenant into place.

"Polly, didn't cha tell the Squirrel y' could guide yer self in?"

"Yes captain. But when they insisted it was procedure I calculated it would be faster to play along than it would be to convince them to break protocol." Parrott smirked. Even on the brink of extinction, bureaucracy never changes.