I let Danielle get back to what she was doing as I wandered off down to the kitchen to find some food for myself. I entered the restaurant from my dreams walking towards the kitchen. I noticed six women sitting around a table.
“There’s nothing in the kitchen except some blood bags in the fridge, it seems they hadn’t stocked the kitchen while this ship was being repaired” Jessica called out to me.
I walked into the kitchen area and opened the fridge fishing out a couple of bags of blood. Walking over to join the others at the table I read the instructions on the bag. It was simple enough, crack the doo dad in the neck of the bag and it would heat the blood up, simple. I did so as I sat down with a serious look on my face. I looked around me at the others.
"Anyone seen any good movies recently?" I asked with a silly grin.
The six women stared at me for a few seconds before they laughed at me and shook their heads.
"So any idea what we should do once we reach the station?'' I asked again after the giggling had settled down.
They slowly shook their heads.
"Probably get dragged into that twelve years forced job thing" the girl I did not recognise whined.
"I'm sorry, who are you?" I asked.
"Oh, that's Stephanie, she is an engineer". Wendy said excitedly.
I frowned as I tilted my head and appraised her.
Name: Stephanie
Clan: Unknown
Vampiric Rank: Blooded
Clan Rank: Member
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Skills:
Vampiric Bite: 1
Space Engineer: 1
“Huh, the planet my memories are from was not space fairing or at least they claimed they weren’t. So I have no idea what a space engineer is.” I said as I looked at her status sheet.
“I create space ships in a space dock, from blueprints of course. I can also perform repairs and upgrades. For instance this ship we are on now, while it is nice. It is just a glorified long haul cargo ship. However, the J71 Light Frigate also known as the Dhampir. She is a thing of beauty! She is fast, sleek, stealthy and can put up one hell of a fight. She is also highly customizable and can be upgraded into the J71 Heavy Frigate known as the Crowning King but sadly the J71 series blueprints were lost a long time ago when a rebel woman claiming to be a king took a stolen J71 Light Frigate and vanished with the blueprints into the dark void of space.”
Candy suddenly started tapping the table with her hand as she swallowed the mouthful of blood as quickly as she could before gasping out and saying.
“I heard about that! I mean I was an orphan on my planet so I never made it into space during my memories lifetime but we were part of the vampiric empire. I heard some soldiers in a tavern near my orphanage complaining about a greedy rebel vampire that stole some blueprints and disabled a ship’s transponder and vanished with a bunch of other rebel women.”
I sat there listening to the six of them talking as I drank from my own blood bag. The blood was surprisingly nice, warm and filling. It tasted like a tender juicy piece of meat.
My attention moved back to the women, as Candy was saying.
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“Can you imagine if you actually found one? I would be all over their gunner station” Candy was bouncing in her seat excitedly as she looked around at each of us.
“Oh come on, you can’t deny you all want to see the inside of that Dhampir-type ship!” I laughed and nodded my head.
“I certainly would." I admitted.
I got to my feet and walked back over to the fridge depositing the second blood bag that I hadn’t touched back into the fridge before looking around the kitchen.
“I wonder what sort of things a cook would make with blood in this fancy kitchen?” I asked as I started opening and closing cupboards and draws.
While I was searching, the ship lurched hard causing me to fall banging my nose into an open cupboard door.
“aah fuck, my nose!” I squealed as I cupped my face feeling a bit of blood trickling into my fingers.
I stormed out into the dining area to see phoebe with her hands up.
“I didn’t do it” she said as she looked at each of us.
I groaned as I rolled my eyes.
They got up and followed me as I walked to the bridge. We found a sheepish-looking Danielle. Whose face paled when she saw me holding my nose with blood between my fingers.
"Oops" she said nervously.
"What happened?" Phoebe asked as she slipped into the pilot's seat.
"I was trying to find a specific planet for Michelle. Like she asked me to and I think I may have altered our course slightly by accident." Danielle replied.
I moved past them all to stand in front of the big screen as I stared out into the void. I slowly let out a sigh.
“How far off course are we now?” I turned to look at Danielle.
She scrunched up her nose as she looked down at her screens.
“I’m not sure, we are sliding out of the tunnel the other ships will make it to the destination but we are going to fall out into an unknown section of space.” she replied.
It was at that moment that the ship decided to agree and lurched hard causing me to fall back onto the floor, I quickly looked up at the screens. I could hear the pilots’ voice from the speakers.
“captain!, we have fallen out of the quantum tunnel early. We are trying to determine where we are” she said.
I got to my feet and walked over and sat down in my chair to look at what was going on.
“how fast can you determine where we are?” I asked Danielle.
“I don't know, the systems are having trouble finding a reference point, it will take me some time to determine where we are.” she replied.
I looked up at the screen and out at the void of space.
“what is out there?” I asked the bridge hoping someone would tell me something good.
“the battle cruisers and that little ship, there not here captain. I am not receiving their signals. It looks like they really did continue on, we are alone." the communications officer replied.
I sighed softly as I turned my head to look at the navigator’s station.
“any idea where we are yet?” I said to Danielle.
“No captain, we do not have a map for this area of space I am afraid we are lost.” Danielle replied to me.
A frown started to form on my face as I began to search the systems in front of me trying to work out how to get us out of here. as I was focused on the screens. I could also see the bridge crew starting to lose hope and turning toward me for guidance, all except of course, for Danielle who was working hard to figure out where we were. A blue screen opened in front of my face
*Congratulations you have acquired the skill Captain level 1*
I stared at the screen confused. It took me a minute for my brain to come back into gear and I appraised the skill the blue screen changed to a description of the skill.
*captain the skill to lead a crew as well as boost the skills of the crew by 10%*
I dismissed the window as I smiled happily.
“now that’s a cool skill” I thought to myself.
I stood up and began to pace.
“Do we need to know where we are to use the quantum drive?” I asked.
“Yes captain, without knowing where we are we can't open a tunnel to our destination… wait what is this?”
I turned to look down at the bubble of Danielle's pod while I waited for her to finish her sentence. I began to feel hopeful maybe we were not totally screwed after all and she has figured out where we are.
“Captain! I am detecting something” she finally finished.
I shifted my weight then jumped from next to Captain’s chair down to the navigators bubble bypassing the gunner’s deck my right-hand landing on top of the bubble as I tried to see what Danielle could but the glass the bubble was made out of was a dark shade of blue and I could not see through it.
“what do you have?” I almost whispered.
I was scared to disturb the air filled with hope from the crew.
“I am not sure what it is Captain but it is only a short flight away I am surprised I can detect it with my level one skill but it appears to be a large ship.” Danielle said while the entire bridge held its breath.
I pumped my fist with joy into the air.
“Set course! pilot get us over there let us hope their navigation maps are still intact” I declared as I raced back up to my seat.