We'd set out on our journey with modest hopes. Make some deliveries, do a bit of trading, maybe explore some under-examined parts of The Void. This mission wasn't meant to be a grand, ambitious quest, it was a glorified road trip with some side hustles along the way... But apparently, that was still a bit too close to the sun for the IVC Icarus, because we were caught up in a Void storm and were left adrift.

I didn't even know if the rest of the crew was still alive. We'd been stuck in separate chambers when the hull was breached, and the life support rune matrix had given out two hours ago. However, just as the air was starting to get thin in the room I'd been stuck in, a knocking came at the door.

"Hello? Anyone in there?" a voice called out.

"What? Who's out there? The ship's life support is down!" I said.

"Oi, look alive gents, we've got a live one in here!" the voice said, clearly directing their words to someone else. Then they shouted back at me. "Do you have a breathing apparatus in there?"

"I used most of my mana reserves trying to save the ship, I couldn't power one even if I had it," I said.

"Boys, fetch an emergency apparatus from the stockpile!" the voice said. A minute or two passed before they pounded on the door again and said. "Hold your breath, buddy, we're cracking in."

I drew a breath quickly, and braced myself as they rammed their way through the door, allowing the air to escape despite the runes that had been keeping it contained. On the other side stood a woman in outdated imperial garb, flanked by several men wearing an assemblage of clothing from random places, in various states of repair.

"Knock knock," she said, tossing an amulet to me. I caught the piece of metal, and immediately felt a pocket of air form over my body, protecting me from the cold caress of the Void.

"Thank the gods you arrived when you did..." I said. "So who are you?"

"Ship crackers, junk filchers, scrap collectors, whatever you want to call it," the woman said. "We saw this derelict vessel floating about, and figured we might be able to get a good haul from it. Turns out it's fresh enough to have warm bodies in it, who knew?"

"So, not an imperial rescue team. I suppose that was too much to hope for," I said. "Have you found anyone else?"

"A few frozen corpses, and one comatose kid, but there are a few rooms we haven't searched yet. Come on, let's get you somewhere that has... You know, air," she said. She turned toward the man wearing a plaid vest and tricorn hat. "Bertie, check the next one while I escort our new guest..."

"Right away, Ma'am," the man said, walking over to a janitor's closet. If there was any more than a single servant in there, they were unlikely to have survived.

The posh woman led me through to a large fissure in the ship, with a door pressed against it into a different vessel. She the way into the halls of a somewhat past-its-prime ship full of random bits of treasure and memorabilia.

"What the hell is all this?" I asked.

"Loot, plunder, treasure... What's it look like?" she asked, continuing down the hall.

"Loot? Plunder? What sort of operation is this?" I asked.

"What do you mean what kind of- Oh, wait, you haven't pieced it together yet, have you?" she asked. "The name's Alexandria Torrentia Polypheus Renholt III, better known as Queen Tor-Pol."

"Queen T- Oh... Shit, this is a pirate vessel isn't it?" I asked.

"The best pirate vessel, thank you very much. You're aboard the Intrepid Valor," Tor-Pol said.

"Right... So what happens next?" I asked.

"Well, once we've found all your ship's personnel, living and otherwise, we'll remove any equipment and magical devices still in working order. Once those are out, we'll strip any valuable scrap from the ship, such as the rune conduits and burnt out rune matrices, then figure out whether it's worth dragging the remaining hulk in to be refitted or dismantled for parts, or if we should just leave it to fill some of the Void's endless hunger," Queen Tor-Pol said.

"I was actually more curious what would happen to me and my crewmates," I said.

"Ah, I see. Well, that depends on who you are..." the Queen said, pausing for a moment. "...That's, uh, that's your cue to tell me who you are..."

"Oh, sure. I am Velsor Tinnarus, Operations Magi of the Imperial Void Crawler Icarus. No, I did not get a vote on the name of our vessel, nor is the irony lost on me," I said.

"Ooh, Magi, eh?" Tor-Pol said. "Those are some valuable skills. Probably worth a pretty penny to ransom back to the Empire, or you could stick around and help out our little operation. Plenty of coin to be had, and we typically don't have imperial enforcers kicking in our door."

"Pretty piss poor at their jobs then," I said.

"Aye, more invested in crushing their own people than the actual outlaws, they are, but that's none of my business," Tor-Pol said with a shrug as she stepped into what appeared to be some sort of mess hall. She turned toward a young man wearing a striped shirt and a neckerchief. "Chauncy! Fetch our guest some bread and wine! And don't let him out of your sight, I've got to go oversee the rest of the search!"

"O-okay, Ma'am!" the young man said, stumbling over a chair as he tried to walk toward the barkeeper without turning his head away from me.

"You can relax, Chauncy! There's nowhere for me to flee to anyway!" I called after him.

"Right-o. Well, if all goes well more of your crew might be alive, but if I were you I'd start figuring out whether you want to join us or not. In any case, I'm off," Tor-Pol said, heading for the door.

I sat down at a table and waited for Chauncy to bring the food he'd been told to provide. The wine was foggy, probably a cheap Merlot from the look of it, and the only serving receptacle he brought was a shallow trencher and a cup, both made of wood. The "bread" was a ship's biscuit, as hard as a rock and about half as palatable, so I poured a bit of the wine onto the dish and let it soak into the bread.

"So, uh, how did you get stranded?" Chauncy asked.

"Ah yes, the one subject I was itching most to discuss at this exact moment," I said, narrowing my eyes at the young man. He shrunk back under my gaze, and I relented. "But I suppose it's worth at least venting a bit..."

I told the young man my take on events. How the Captain decided to chart a course directly through a boulder ring instead of going around as I had advised, acquiescing to the helmsman's insistence that "he could get us through" and that "it would be faster". By the time we'd gotten through, our defense system had burned through a quarter of our mana preventing the drifting stones from ripping us asunder. "No problem", they had said, "there's a rest stop in the next realm", but the station we reached had recently fought off a Void Dragon, so they didn't have enough mana in reserve to sell us any. Such was an ever-present risk in the Void, and the reason I didn't want to spend our energy unnecessarily.

We had trekked on, and found another crew in need of help. However, the captain didn't deign to wake me up, so I slept through the entire operation and we missed the chance to siphon their mana cores before leaving. By the time we docked next, we were at half of our max capacity, and said dock didn't have a mana station. We set out on the excruciating next leg of the journey, and ended up stuck in a time anomaly for a week, by the end of which we were so low on energy that we had to choose between keeping the lights on or keeping life support running...

"So what did you do?" Chauncy asked.

I stared blankly at him for a moment before saying, "Believe it or not, we elected to continue breathing and burned candles for light instead. Suffice to say, by the time the Voidlings showed up and breached our hull, the situation was basically doomed already. I swear, if there's any justice in this world the captain had better be among the bodies..."

As if on cue, a voice called out from the entryway into the mess hall. It said, "Velsor! Thank goodness you made it!"

"God dammit..." I said. I turned toward the boisterous man in his Imperial Naval Officer's uniform and said. "Hello, Captain."