“Sure. Make sure you send some vids of Jessica along.” Jess’ precision-flying spin-kicks were things of beauty, as many of her opponents had found out. Alas, not being able to fly had held her back in actual competition on the Colosseum, which she had taken with good grace. That was what the Spiders were for... and webbing the shit out of them with crystal webs outside an arena if she was landbound. “Personnel manager, I think. Make sure you include lots of feet in faces,” I mused thoughtfully, and she grinned in appreciation.

“Security officer?” he asked me, and I gave him an offended face.

“I am obviously the science officer,” I sniffed.

“But what’s Pete gonna be?” he had to smile.

“Jealous I’m the science officer?” I replied with another sip.

“He’s gonna whine,” Jessica said knowingly.

“An’ make those puppy-dog eyes,” Ben agreed sagely.

“Yes, Mr. Pilot,” I replied.

“Hey!” he protested.

“McCoy’s gonna be navigating, you know it. Who else you gonna trust to fly a spaceship in this joint?” I asked him. “You shoulda been training them all to fly this stuff, and no, no, you gotta contemplate your navel and work on your sculpting skills!”

“He’s actually pretty good at the sculpting...” Jessica interjected with a smile. She had been one of the first people he’d made a bust of. Ben beamed at her.

“Nevermind, I’ll go ask Comet. I’m sure she’ll dump Station duties on Wrench for the chance to fly an alien starship back to its homeworld and open diplomatic relations with Terra.”

“Hey!” Ben protested. “I didn’t say no!”

“Gwen?” Richard asked, interested.

“Signals.”

“Cindy?”

“Sensors.”

“What about all the work that has ta get done?” Ben grumbled, pointing at a stack of papers off to the side.

“It’s mostly design work. We can do the majority of the planning work on Visual Files or our portables. The lab work we can either put off towards the end, or... how big is this ship?” I asked Richard.

“Um, about a mile long?” he answered.

I looked at him over my mug for a moment. “Are you serious?”

“Uh, yes?”

I slid my eyes over to Ben. “Huh,” he realized. “Or we could bring a lab or something right along with us...”

“There might well be fully-equipped labs aboard the ship,” Mentor intoned from off the red star on Rich’s helmet. “My files on the ship are incomplete. I do not even believe it has been registered properly.”

“What brought it here?” I asked politely.

“I believe it was hijacked,” the AI admitted. “The centurion in charge was likely murdered by the hijacker.”

I paused my coffee, staring at the red star on the golden helmet. “Do we know who, or if they are still alive?”

“That is unknown,” the helmet admitted.

I glanced at Ben. “Of course the murderin’ bastard is alive!” he grunted, and we all threw up our hands.

I glanced at Richard. “Oh, crap,” he mumbled. “The guy running that ship was a Rank 5 or 6 Centurion!”

“We can assume he knows how to kill Nova Corpsmen. Probably uses energies you either cannot absorb or opposed to the Nova Force, if I were to hazard things. Mentor, take note of tactics and strategies to that effect.”

“Noted, Dynamo.”

“He will have noticed that there is an active Nova Corpsman on the planet, it is likely. How long have you had the suit, Rich?” I asked him.

“Uh, wow, five, nearly six years? A few months after Spidey started running around...”

Had it been that long? Damn. Crazy superverse, always so damn busy...

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Okay, he probably didn’t stick around all that time if he’s a spacer, but he’ll be coming back now that he knows a Corpsman is here. That ship is worth a lot of money, and that’s the main reason to hijack it and kill its captain. We can assume he’s coming back here for Rich, and he’s gonna be watching to see about getting aboard that ship and taking it.”

“When will he hit it, then?” Ben asked reasonably.

“Hyperspace,” I said calmly. “He can’t hit it here. Comet, the Lantern, Primus... it’s suicide. At the far end is Xandar itself. He can only hit it in the middle where there’s no help.”

“Huh. Pirates in space, huh?” Ben paused. “Not just space, bloody hyperspace.” He gave Rich a hard eyeball. “You are now officially flagged for the really crazy stuff, buckethead.”

“Looking for da widdle junior corpsman flying da big ship all awone. Poor widdle junior corpsman,” Jessica laughed softly into her cup.

“Well, the crew is going to get bigger. I nominate Peggy Carter along as head of security.”

“That’s a good idea,” Rich had to admit.

“Izzit armed? If pirates got to it,” Ben asked.

“All Nova Corps ships are capable of battle. There may not have been crew enough to man all the weapons, nor may all of the weapons have been online,” Mentor informed them.

“We should probably have Wrench go over the ship, then. Master Gunner... gotta be Cyclops. Kid’s got a gift for instant ballistic calculations,” Ben mused aloud.

“He is SO good at that stuff,” Jessica Jones agreed, rolling her eyes. “Do not play shooter games with him.” As everyone had, and been schooled, even with enhanced reflexes, this came as no surprise to anyone. Instant spatial and range calculation ability was as good as enhanced reflexes at stuff, and Scott was a crack shot.

“Kinda surprised he didn’t ship out with the Starjammers. Didn’t his brothers?” Rich spoke up, setting down his empty cup.

“Jean’s still taking classes at Cynosure,” I said knowingly, and they all got oh, right looks on their faces. “Alex is bringing Lorna along with him, and Remy fits right into that crew. I think he brought a girlfriend along, who might or might not be the heir to the Assassin Guild of Orleans.”

Everyone looked at one another. Rich sat back down, and I poured him another cup, refilling Jessica’s too. “What about the elf?” he asked.

“Draufganger? Kurt would be out there buckling a swash in a heartbeat, but he made a minimum two-year commitment to Euroforce, so he’s got some time to burn. He’s working on totally maxing out his ‘porting skills. In space, they cover a lot more distance, and if he can master the Skimming side, the upside to shadowjumping is absolutely huge.”

“Skimming side?” Jessica repeated.

I waved a holo up. “Kurt doesn’t actually Teleport, he Plane-Shifts really fast. He goes from our world,” I made a sphere, drew a line from the middle of it to another sphere, “and enters this underworld, parallel world, sideworld, offworld, whatevah; moves a little bit there,” tiny little line, “and comes back to our world in a different location, kinda like bouncing and reflecting.” I drew the line back to a distance much further than the amount he had traveled. “It’s just like in a video game, but without set arches. You teleport to the teleport nexus, and walk from one gate to another gate, teleport again. Ten steps takes you all the way across the map.”

“Oh, right! That makes sense!” Jessica nodded, as did Rich. “So, Skimming?”

“Instead of going into the plane, you Skim along the surface of it.” The length of the line that entered the other dimension was instead extended along the outside of the globe. The resulting arc was much wider than the tiny movement inside the sphere. “And it doesn’t bring along that black smoke.” Everyone made the same face and wrinkled their noses. It didn’t last long, but Bamf-Smoke did indeed stink.

“Hard to learn?” Ben asked dryly.

“Yeah, actually. There’s no existing psi-discipline out there quite like it, as he has to tap the natural power of his Core, turn it with a Dimensional Technique, and do it all automatically, in the middle of a Bamf. He actually had almost no luck until I advised he learn one of those mental acceleration Techniques, and hook it into his Bamf. Then he started seeing what actually happened when he did his pop-and-go.” Sluuuurp, as they all hung on my words. “You want to know what he sees, you go talk to him. But, yeah, he can Skim now, and he’s really working hard on getting better at it.”

“How’s that work with Shadowjumping?” Rich asked, confused. “Does he use the Darkforce Dimension or something?”

I pointed to him, giving him a point for sharpness, and he grinned as I slurped. “All those dimensions have intersections, and his Bamfing touches on them. If he can extend it to shadow, well... jumping between shadows in space can involve truly massive distances. If the nearest shadow to your ship, for instance, is a million miles away, in Shadow they are right next to one another.” I held up two fingers close together, and wiggled them. “You could try Teleporting, too, but that’s total calculations in your head of where you are, were, and where you’re going to end up. Shadowjumping, you literally step across a line, and there you are, right next to whatever cast the shadow.”

“Nice,” Rich nodded. “Is that similar to hyperspace?”

“Nah. Totally different direction.” My Holos altered form, to a straight line and an arch, both of them alternating the shape. “Hyperspace is about higher spaces existing at curves to ours, so you multiply the distance traveled.” Square units of distance compressed ten, hundred, thousands of times and more, and the arches bent more and more as they did so. “It’s actually closer to Bamfing, but the bounce is a straight line between entry and exit. The tech level is how high a hyperspace band you can reach, which is how much bending, which is how much speed and travel time. When you are talking about thousands or millions of light years, that multiplier gets very important.”

“Uh, yeah,” Rich agreed, trying not to do the math on it.

“Engineering! Medical!” Jessica suddenly blurted out.

“We’re not taking Stark!” Ben promptly declared.

“I got engineers. I can double on medical.”

“Not if Peter is coming,” Rich grinned.

I thought about that, and rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I’ll make sure McCoy whines about it, too.”

“He’s putting that interest in alternate spectrum astronomy to work. If he complains, he should stop publishing about it,” Ben grunted. We all looked at him. “What? I was interested in space before any of you were born!” Which was probably true, although he wasn’t THAT much older than us. He started early.

“And you don’t want to lose your navigator,” I mused.

“And back-up pilot,” he reminded me.

“You know Mentor could probably fly that ship by itself,” I pointed out.

“But then the kid couldn’t be captain and have a crew along,” Ben promptly refuted me. Rich grinned widely at the fact despite himself.

“True.” I considered the last of my coffee. “What kind of a time limit do we have on this stuff, Mentor?”