"Creaking? What sort of creaking?"
"The kind of creaking that comes from vessels that have lived too long," the trembling cook tells him. "The kind of creaking that comes from tiredness and lonliness and pain."
"I'd rather ya just get to the point, and not try to wax poetic at me."
"Sorry," he says after a moment. "But you must at least understand what I'm trying to say. It's... it's them."
"Them?" He looked towards his first mate, who shrugged and continued fiddling with the safe in front of him.
"Don't you know? About..." the cook squirmed, his eyes darting around, "about The Spear of the King?"
"That ships a myth," his first mate chirpped, "just a legend. A ship of pirates, so rich and clever that the whole universe was after them. The only place they could run to was the center of the universe itself, where no sane person would follow."
"They've been gone for over a hundred years," the cook whispered, "and now, now they're coming back."
"Well, if they are coming back," the captain grinned, "then we had best be ready to greet them."
"Are you serious about going out there?"
"Of course, I'm always serious."
His first mate doesn't try to contain his laughter, setting his drink down on the desk with a thud.
"I'm going alone."
He instantly goes quiet, staring at his captain. A hundred questions run across his face, though he doesn't voice any of them. Instead he sighs and nods, picking his drink back up and downing what's left inside of it.
"Well, I won't stop you."
"I know."
"I'll tell you you're an idiot though."
"I know."
The captain stands, holding his hand out to his first mate, "Take care of all of them, yeah?"
"Only until you come back," he answers, gripping his hand firmly in answer.
The mini-ship is waiting for him, humming quietly with stored power. The rest of the crew was nowhere to be seen, though he could feel the eyes upon him. He didn't turn to look at them, stepping into the mini-ship and adjusting the console. He nodded to his first mate, watching as he flipped the switches to release the mini-ship. Immediately he started to drift away from the ship, letting himself fall through space for a moment before activating the sail, coasting away from the ship, not looking back.
It took him a little under a day to hear the creaking for himself.
It took him three more days to see the ship itself.
The ship looked as if it had never sailed a day in its life. A pristine platinum hull glowed, the sails shimmering with power.
Immediately his small vessel was being pulled towards the ship, the invisible pull of a tractor beam. The bottom of the ship opened, his mini-ship settling in its hull. The hull closed back up behind him, and he was left in darkness. He sat in the silence for several minutes, waiting to see what would happen next.
"Why... why did you come here?"
"I wanted to know the truth."
"Truth... what is the truth?"
The voice warbled, as though the speaker was underwater. The captain looked carefully around the hull, unable to see anything in the darkness but curious nonetheless.
"What... year... is it?"
"Well by Earth-standard it's 3091."
"We've... been gone long?"
The captain hummed and shrugged, assuming he could be seen, "About a hundred years I believe."
"For us... it's been a thousand. Time... does not work properly here."
"It doesn't? Or is it broken everywhere else?"
There was a pause, then a strangled laugh. Light slowly filled the hull, and the captain finally saw who had been talking to him.
"Welcome aboard then. I... hope you're ready."
Fifty years later, when the crew of The Crimson Crown gathered to mourn their lost captain at the last spot they saw him, they found a message waiting for them, traveling on the dust of the cosmos.
"Take care boys. I'm home."
From the prompt: You sail the great and spacious void between galaxies, a pirate of the stars with your solar sail and patchwork crew. You've been having the best life that a space pirate can have, but recently you've noticed that your targets are more worried about fleeing, than arguing for their possessions. Finally, sick of not knowing, you ask a captain whose ship you've currently taken, and they tell you about the great big creaking coming from the maw of the universe itself.
