Gregory was roused from his depressive loop by an annoying beeping that would not stop. He was going by Gregory because he'd been called that for a few millennia, maybe ten or more. His name was Carlos M Kreig. He could have sworn he heard a kerchunk sound as he realized what the beeping was. A priority rescue request from a ship. It was in the Warp nearby.
He did a quick check over his functionality. Everything was okay but needed cleaning and minor maintenance, and there were dents and scratches and what was possibly a space barnacle that needed tending to. He realized that he really didn't like the space barnacle and carved it off with a prototype mining lazer.
He then did his maintenance while crunching the numbers on the S.O.S. and running checks on the forced dewarping device. His paint bots didn't have anything to do, so he had them paint on some civilian decals for Costco, Cabela's, and other old stores until he realized that his hull was looking like an ancient NASCAR, covered in sponsorship decals. He was fine with that.
In his few who knows how longs of depression, he had built entire malls within himself. He had spoofed some credentials and gotten access to all of the old stuff. He could fab up Federation power armor if he wanted, but he had been hoping to experience something similar to normalcy by roaming around stores, homes, and school in a service frame. He didn't get that normalness.
This rescue might get him a backseat normalcy watching rescues roam around and live for a time. This plan did not work either, but he had something like hope, just short of actual hope, it was there though. The numbers were done, but they were off.
It was not an incorrect off, but a warpy before it was a thing off. He received a distress signal a few minutes ago from a ship that was yet to get near and was still functional. Warp can cause weird stuff, which is why his father invented a better and safer FTL travel that didn't involve the Warp, Warp tunnels, webs, Eldar or creepy ancient horrors. It's also why he stayed out of the Warp, and also why the AI uprising happened.
He swore he heard someone yell YOLO when he decided to call them up, maybe he was going crazy. He pondered as to what the hell yolo meant for a split second before he remembered that he was about to use the experimental radio that produced the waves where you wanted them rather from an antenna. He was starting to get the occasional flashes of memories that weren't his and possibly completely made up, but he shelved all of that for later, preferably much later.
He hailed them using his original human name with the title Captain. Including the ships legal designation, he stated cleanly and concisely what he received, requested clarification, and offered aid. He was expecting them to either be dead or ignore his hail. They responded, and sure as particle decay, they voiced concerns about Warp Drive fluctuations, a weakening Gellar Field, and that they hadn't sent an SOS yet.
Something exploded after they said they hadn't, audible in the transmission and obvious on his sensors. Their drive detonated in a rather ship crippling display of rapid unplanned disassembly. Now, one may be led to believe that this ship in the Warp must have been improperly maintained for such a failure, but it was just an eventuality of the purposely flawed manufacturing to sell more Drives and Gellar generators.
The life expectancy of the equipment was only two millennia and the occasional catastrophe ensured that people replaced them on time. If the equipment had been manufactured to the original design specifications of Dr. Kreig, it wouldn't have a life expectancy when properly maintained. Gregory Two had such a drive, but chose to stay out of the Warp, using one of the many other FTL options at his disposal. He had way too much time on his hands to not do something with it, so invention and mods helped with the depression even if only slightly.
The ship being rescued put out the SOS right after and accepted the aid offer. It was some kind of trade vessel, not huge like him, but not small by normal human metrics. It was a well kept vessel, just inadvertently sabotaged by the greed of the past an ignorance of the present. He hit it with the dewarper, after telling everyone to brace for emergency Warp translation.
The Rogue Trader vessel took a bit of a beating from it, but came back to reality without loosing any pieces in the process. The crew were shaken up and took some injuries. Nobody died, which was better than estimated. When Rogue Trader Karfafeneu Voxed him about it, the Gellar Field generator gave up on existing, and Gregory told him "Any translation you can walk away from is a good one."
The Captain and Trader Karfafeneu didn't argue, but wanted to know the plan for how he was going to be exploited by the"gracious captain" of the XBCS799465 Gregory Two. A crewman could be heard informing Karfafeneu about the"metal planetoid" that they were about to crash into, how it was covered in ancient Terran markings, and its weird "shippy shape". Rogue Trader Karfafeneu ordered a course change and asked if the massive ship was the Gregory Two.
A positive reply left the Rogue Trader in shock, it was as big as a space fortress. Gregory didn't let him have a hemorrhage over it. Switching to a less formal tone, he started buttering up the trader in a soothing southern drawl. He eventually went through the list of goods, services, and equipment he had to offer the man at a discount for "being down on your luck and shafted by cheap designs from money hungry bastards".
Karfafeneu was taken aback a bit. "The forge world that made my Warp Drive is the finest Adeptus Mechanicus forge outside of Mars itself, ran purely by the Mechanicus for the service of Warp ships at the behest of the Imperium. You claim that they purposely made a faulty drive?" He was getting angry.
"Naw, easy there. They made it to their specifications, which were flawed before the Mechanicus was a thing. Way back in the day Dr. Elijah Kreig invented the Warp Drive and the companies that were producing them purposely altered the manufacturing and material processes to sell more of them via failures."
Rogue Trader Karfafeneu took a deep breath to ease some of the tension that had been building up. "Well it did last for ten millennia, so we got our money's worth. Shame it didn't last until we made it back to Imperial space. How much do you quote a dry dock and repair?"
"Well, to house and feed the everyone on board, dry dock your ship, and fix it up better than new will be..." He started crunching numbers and taking past costs for repairs from actual Mechanicus shipyards. "Well, good news and bad. There are systems that I cannot in good conscious allow to stay so under capable, but I can get it done way cheaper than the Toaster Boys."
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Rogue Trader Karfafeneu was prepared to just ask for a tow, but he was quoted half of the price of just a Warp Drive. He didn't believe the secretive captain, but his own ship was would be considered irreparable by all but the best shipyards. If all else failed, he would be having his entire crew take full advantage of the proposed two weeks aboard the Gregory Two and ask to be dropped off at the nearest Imperial shipyard with everything he could fit in his pockets, trousers, and luggage.
Karfafeneu ordered all crew, meaning everyone, to prepare for drydock and disembarkment. He then clarified with "Every living human, abhuman, post human, etcetera needs to square themselves away, pack some clothes, and prepare to take a two week vacation aboard a new ship while this ship gets repaired. Don't make trouble for the kind captain of the Gregory Two while we're there, but you may use your free time during this vacation as you see fit." That last part actually got people moving.
As soon as the deal was agreed to, the Gregory Two began to reposition and open up an absolutely massive hangar bay. You could have fit a Gloriana class or two in there. That and despite the size, the Gregory Two was one of the best looking ships that Karfafeneu had ever seen, it looked better than the craftworld that his great great great great great grandfather had made a portrait and taken a picture of. He was having trouble believing it was a human vessel.
The docking clamps attached and Karfafeneu went to sign the agreement. He was met right outside of the airlock with a document that stated all of the discussed repairs, costs of them, timelines, guidelines, calibration specs, programming, crew housing, perdiam subsidies, rules while aboard, etc. He signed it. The worst is that he got killed, but it beats dying in the Warp or starving to death because his hydroponics bays were destroyed.
The crew went through the security checks, many picking up part time jobs. Right after he realized that the Gregory Two was effectively a still working part of the Dark Age of Technology Federation, he spread the rumors that one could personally buy archeotech lawfully there if they had the money. So Karfafeneu effectively encouraged his crew to do part time jobs aboard to offset losses. The crew did it both out of greed and out of not wanting to lose their place in the crew.
The only ones that weren't allowed to take up a job were the mutants and the tech priests. The mutants were allowed to after they received genetic therapy to correct their conditions. The tech priests were pretty much told not to touch anything and told at the checkpoint that they were only just tolerated and that they would be killed and replaced if they tried anything aside from staying alive.
The jobs had tiers, each with a corresponding currency. Those doing nothing got Neet Notes that could only be used on food, water, clothing, and games. Others got Production Points, Crime Credit, Cop Coins, Mil Marks, etcetera with each having limits on what it could buy and specialty shops focused around that job type. It might seem weird, but it keeps people from just pooling all of it together and buying extremely high end things.
Karfafeneu had to go through check lists about what was supposed to be on his ship and check boxes about it. If there was something that wasn't supposed to be there and he wanted it gone, he had to check the red box. If it was supposed to be there as part of the ship and needed to stay where it was, the green box. If it was cargo or such and could be moved around, he checked the blue box. If he didn't know what it was and needed consultation about it, he was to check the question mark box. A simple process that he enjoyed compared to the regular shipyards.
There were some crew members that were crippled, crazy, or too old for working, even if they refuted the fact. They were encouraged to report to the hospital, not just a med bay, there was a fully fledged hospital. Once there, they were treated with whatever it took to get them fully functional again. Digital neurological therapy and advanced psychomedical techniques for the crazies, juvenot for the old, surgery and regrowth or prosthesis for the crippled, it was DAoT hospital. The only incurable thing there was death, which could largely be avoided.
There was a group of passengers that had to be dealt with. He didn't want anything to do with the person carrying the weirdly shaped electronic identification device, but still had the group do the same "name, age, gender, medical requirements, blah blah" that everyone else did. The Inquisitor shouldn't have been there, even if it was only a junior in training. The big guy that was alone was more pressing of an issue.
He had a name that took a full day and admitted his occupation as one of the eyes of the Emperor, formerly of the Custodian Guard. Gregory Two asked Karfafeneu about the Custodian and the Junior Inquisitor. He got an earful and a half about each of them. The former Custodian was a stowaway and the Junior Inquisitor was aboard the trader by demand, on the juniors behalf and to Karfafeneus chagrin.
He let the old Custodian do what he pleased. Captain Carlos M Kreig was not about to do anything to insult an honored veteran, so the big guy could do anything he wanted just short of grand theft, murder, or trying to break the ship. This came to a head when Gregory/ Captain Carlos got an ejection alarm and everything went black. He had no input or output at all and was panicking for what felt like hours.
It was only a minute, and the Custodian told him as much when he came back around. Captain Carlos checked all of the chronometers and clocks just to be sure and then entered into an ear blistering rant about trespassing, the definition of assault and battery, breaking and entering, and many other things. The former Custodian waited patiently for the rant to spool down before pointing out that he was no longer a Custodian and had to make sure Captain Carlos Montgomery Kreig was not an abominable intelligence.
"Tradition holds that the highest rank of service achieved and honorably discharged from is the proper title for former military, political, and civil professionals. Current crimes and statuses are not permitted to effect that, like calling a retired doctor doctor despite being retired. The word retired is tacked on to the title for legal proceedings and official documents. With your name being three pages of nine by twelve paper printed single spaced at twelve point font, I formally request to just call you Custodian or a similar shortened name of your choosing."
"And WHAT THE HELL IS AN ABOMINABLE INTELLIGENCE? IS IT LIKE AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? I'm just going to yell at EVERYONE who so much as seems to HAVE THEIR HEAD UP THEIR"
The Junior Inquisitorial goons came in in the middle of it barking demands and promptly got a full demonstration of the less than lethal subdual methods of the core containment vault. The knockout gas, stun pulses, bean bags, restrictive foam, antitractive liquid, segratory force fields, and chemical irritants were all deployed. The goon squad was out of the fight before they got past "we are hereby seizi".
The retired Custodian was almost unaffected, but had moved one foot to dodge sneeze ball and had to remember figure skating. Why did he try to dodge something that only causes sneezing? We will never know, but he managed to stay on his feet and not go unconscious. The police style service frame was used to arrest and load everyone onto a cart for a quick trip to the hospital and then a stay in the brig, or stasis in the case of the Junior Inquisitor.
Nobody tries to commit grand theft sentient warp ship on him. Captain Carlos Montgomery Kreig of the experimental Terran Federation vessel Gregory Two was angry. He looked through all information about Terra that he could get and found something promising.
The Emperor's Custodian Guard Captain had contact information. He wasn't going to go full Karen. He was going to send the information about the who, the what, the when, and some of the why with the lists of changes. He added extradition opportunities after the lawful punishments to be levied and what was to be done if they rathered levy Imperium style punishment of the criminals with a bypass of Terran Federation law due to them being citizens of the Imperium of Man.