Faith

".... Well, shit."

Leaning back in his pilot seat, Mike released all the tension from his body now that the Wyrm had jumped to hyperspace.

"... What do you think the-"

"Pretty much zero, there's no way they escaped that torpedo if it started sprinting like that."

While Mike and the others had made it out alive, there was very little chance they could make it all the way out without the support Mike had hoped the Valourant could have provided.

"Umm, what exactly happened?"

Sensing something had gone seriously wrong that he didn't know about, Dan finally chose to speak up.

"... We got out, but we lost our support, so now we need to travel 300 light years without any support, using only the supplies we have on board and somehow evade detection and capture at the same time."

Laying out what had happened to Dan, Mike started thinking about their current problem in more detail, perhaps they weren't as fucked as he had first thought.

"Wait, we're travelling 300 light years?"

Taking issue with the distance Mike had mentioned, Dan tapped a few times on the floor of the cockpit before declaring.

"Well, that's going to be tough in this kind of ship, given there are only supplies enough to last us about 15 days, even with rationing… Where exactly are we right now? I might know of someplace with supplies available."

Taking issue with the cultist sitting comfortably in her ship spouting all sorts of nonsense, River felt the need to voice her objections.

"I'm sorry, how the fuck would you know that? Even putting all that shit aside there's no way we'll just trust you to not betray and kill us at the first chance you get."

"Well, I wouldn't necessarily kill all of you, given how easy that would be I would suck the blood out of at least one of you."

Although Dan was mostly expressionless when he spoke, Mike had (luckily) picked up on his messed-up sense of humour already, thus he interjected before weapons were drawn.

"That'll still kill a person."

"Nonono, I can leave just enough behind for it to not be lethal."

"Mike, you can't be serious about trusting this guy."

Still not quite on board with trusting the bloodsucker although Mike was clearly already best friends with, River needed a bit more explanation before she was on board.

The reason why Jessica hadn't said anything yet was that she simply trusted Mike blindly, even as insane as his plans and ideas were and continued to be, they had worked fine so far.

"I am serious River."

"He's the same kind of fucking cul-"

"I'm not a fucking cultist!"

Surprised by how loud he was suddenly being, Dan calmed down and took a deep breath before explaining.

"I'm sorry, but whatever you want to believe I am, I am not. My faith is still strong yes, but I am not a cultist, with all I still have left I despise the cardinals, those fucking fossils took everything from me before they robbed me of my eyes and stuck me into a hole to rot… I was down there for 252 years before Mike freed me, so I no longer have any connections with the Eden Therocasy, they can all burn for what I care."

Getting up from his seat, Dan went to leave the cockpit before stopping in the doorway.

"You can call me whatever the fuck you want, except for cultist. Do that again and we're going to have a real fucking problem."

As Dan left to go sulk in the cargo bay, River realised she might have fucked up and got up to apologise before Mike stopped her with a headpat.

"No problem, I'll go talk with him real quick."

"... Sure."

Sitting back down with a somewhat perplexed look on her face (which Mike blissfully missed) River wasn't left alone with her thoughts for long.

"I do like that you share your opinions so openly, but next time perhaps you could ease a bit into it?"

"Yeah I know, you don't have to rub it in like that…"

"Oh, but I do, it is the only way you'll learn. I'm a lot like that myself."

-

After Mike smoothed things over with Dan and River awkwardly apologised, the crew got started on their most pressing issue: survival.

"So, how long until we warp out?"

Sitting in a huddle beside one of the hydroponic modules that took up a good part of space in the Wrym's hangar / all-room, the crew got to brainstorming ideas as if their life depended on it; because it did.

"About 2 hours."

Checking his personal terminal after Jessica updated him on the approximate ETA, Mike started to work on a plan.

"Then what about our position?"

"I managed to scrape all the map data from the Valourant's databanks while working there, but the map is incomplete and not even that up to date."

"Of course you did Mike, this is why I don't trust anything electronic anymore…"

Remembering the blissful times she could use her terminal while showering, River got a thousand-yard stare as she started to zone out.

"Then with the map data you have, do we know our exact position? It might be a few hundred years out of date but I memorised basically every single system in this galaxy when I served as an Inquisitor."

"Wait what? How could you even memorise 500 million stars without your head exploding?"

Feeling like she had somehow missed something important, Jessica's ears stood at attention as she demanded an explanation.

"It's 430 billion, and I just memorised them as I had a few days downtime, it helped a lot as I travelled a lot doing my time as an Inquisitor."

Looking to Mike as Dan's explanation didn't really make any sense, Mike quickly explained things to Jessica.

"Inquisitors are genetically optimised unicorns, needless to say, they're strong, fast and basically immortal but also smart, some even have perfect recall."

"P-perfect what now?"

"Perfect recall, meaning they don't forget anything, ever."

Having explained the term to Jessica, Mike quickly continued speaking so as to make sure the others didn't stare too much at Dan.

"So, how do we convey the information about where we are to you?... I don't mean to poke but-"

"Yeah, yeah I'm blind, I know."

Doing an exaggerated wave in front of his empty eye-sockets still with a completely blank face, Dan moved on before the rest of the crew could find out if he just tried to tell a joke or not.

"But I memorised a lot of stuff, I might have that 'perfect recall' thing you talked about Mike, given my information is about 200 years out of date I think our best guess is luminosity and spectral classification."

"Righty, give me a second…"

As the only other person getting what Dan was talking about, Mike started fiddling with his personal console.

"Okay… We're currently jumping to an M0V class red dwarf with 0.069 (nice) L⊙."

"That narrows things down a bit… Where did we jump from?"

"A primary B8II, 715 L⊙ with an M1V class around 0.071 L⊙."

"I know where we are, give me a second to think back…"

As Dan fell silent concentrating, Mike finally updated the two others on what they were doing.

"200 years isn't long enough to really alter a star's luminosity or spectral classification that much, so even if they've all moved a bit in their obits Dan can find out where we are based on their classifications and luminosity in relation to each other."

Trying to understand what Mike had just said almost made smoke pour out of Jessica's eyes within seconds, but River was somehow able to comprehend what Dan was doing, if only conceptually.

"I might have something… Is there a G5 around?"

Coming back to the surface, Dan suggested an alternative destination compared to the one they were currently heading towards.

"... Yeah, with 0.79 L⊙."

Checking Dan's work, Mike found just one main sequence star which fit Dan's designation.

"That's the one."

"What will we find there?"

"A barren 0.7 G world that once served as a shipyard for the Eden Therocasy, most of the resources for spacecraft construction were depleted about 300 years ago and the shipyard and system were therefore abandoned. I'm pretty sure they never bothered to dismantle all the automatic refuelling stations, and if we're lucky there'll be some rations left over in one of the shipyard stockpiles."

While fuel was basically pure hydrogen that wouldn't be that affected by a few hundred years of storage, food (and even water) would be a different story altogether.

"... Even looking past my palette, there are so many problems with eating 300-year-old food."

"Yeah, normally I don't agree with Mike, but on this point, I agree, would it even be safe to eat something like that?"

"Well, clearly this is the end of the world, River is ag- AW! Sorry."

Getting punched mid-sentence, Mike decided to shut up and let the adults in the room solve the problem.

"Oh right, you guys don't know about tac."

""What the hell is tac?""

"It's what the Eden Therocasy basically lives off of, it can't expire, go bad or otherwise spoil in any way. Even irradiating it doesn't do anything and it contains every single maco and vitamin needed… Yeah I know, look, the taste is bad, like really bad but it was perfected in every other aspect by the one above and it has been a staple here for about 5000 years, if there were any issues with it would have been found by now."

Even without eyesight Dan knew the look on the other's face when he explained what tac was, but he made sure to reassure that it was safe to eat the best he could.

"... Well, given we don't have any other choices..."

":.. Yeah."

With both River and Jessica giving their tacit approval, all eyes turned to Mike that figured his time-out period was over.

"Yeah sure, I acquired the skill to eat pretty much everything without worrying about the taste a long time ago."

While Mike was talking about his time as a poor student living off of plain rice, oatmeal and pasta for weeks on end after blowing all his cash on pc parts of drinking, River was the only one who caught onto that as he had still only told her about him.

Oblivious to most things Mike would completely miss all the looks of worry he would receive over the next few days.

-

With their new destination set, the Wrym jumped out of hyperspace in the middle the vast void between stars and changed its destination before jumping again, reaching the star Dan had mentioned after 10 hours of travel.

"... Here we are, River?"

"No active contacts detected."

"Good, Jessica?"

"Several artificial satellites detected in addition to the 3 natural, the ones orbiting planetoids are cold while the others that are orbiting the star are giving off quite a bit of waste heat in accordance with the prediction that they are automated fuel harvesting facilities."

Hearing that everything seemed to be as Dan said, Mike didn't feel anything was amiss either.

"Okay, where to Dan?"

"Diatos 2, the air is barely breathable, the ground is toxic and depleted but it should have some food stores left as tac is basically the only abundant resource in the Eden Therocasy that isn't blood."

"Righty, fuel first, food later."

Having preemptively decided that they would rather be able to run away without food than be stuck in the system without fuel if trouble showed up, Mike first set course for the refuelling satellites in low orbit around the system's star.

As the Wyrm engaged hypercriuse, the gravitational waves that jump generated propagated throughout the system at the speed of light and were eventually detected by sensors installed on Diatos 2, warning of guests that might be approaching.