The Captain Needs A Crew

After ending the call his heart was beating like crazy and he could feel the rush of adrenalin his body was sending out. He lent back in the pilot seat and forcefully drew a few slow deep breaths, till he could feel his heartbeat slow down a little.

As a somewhat awkward person, he had learned a long time ago how to deal with this kind of overreaction of his body and knew all too well, that rash and adrenalin driven actions would lead him nowhere.

He calmed down little by little until only his hands were slightly shaking from the adrenalin rush earlier.

Only after he felt, he was in a somewhat normal state of mind again, did he allow himself to think about the situation and what to do.

First, he opened up the Crew Logs to gather Information on Himself and the Crew.

_____________________________________________________________________________

CREW: 08/24

Captain : Jack Halo

Officers : 2/4

Navigation Officer :

Security Officer : Maya Halo

Medical Officer :

Engineering Officer: Mordred Void

Crew : 5/19

Deckhand : Rice Whilly

Deckhand : Jamy Grobell

Quartermaster : Willy Morry

Mechanic : Sandria Mitchy

Electronics Tech. : Lyna Colee

_____________________________________________________________________________

He stared at the list for a moment. In the game, it never really bothered him to fly with less than the recommended crew, but now he somehow felt unsafe, seeing that they had no medical personnel and only one Meachnic on board.

Navigation and Piloting should not be a problem, he had yet to test his theory, but he was used to piloting this spacecraft on the highest and most realistic difficult setting.

The next thing on his list of worries was the new body. He had plenty of experience in using it, from playing the game and until now nothing had felt out of place. He guessed the hardest thing would be reacting to the new name.

Just to make sure he got up from the seat and stretched a little while thinking about the naming problem.

In the end, he decided to just go with the name as he could not think of a good enough reason to change it suddenly and seemingly out of the blue.

With most of the personal problems sorted, he returned to dealing with matters of the ship and the journey ahead of them.

The quest he had accepted before somehow transmigrating into the game, had him deliver the young Princess of the House Vallian to their political enemies and rivals of the House Steel Song. One just had to capture the young girl while she was on vacation on one of the amusement planets near the centre of House Vallians territory and then bring her to the closest military outpost of House Steel Song, without getting found out by the Vallian military patrols.

There were a lot of different outcomes possible, depending on how one would choose to do the quest. You could go in guns blazing, kidnap the princess and make a run for the border and on the lower difficulties that was a valiant option.

The high realism mode, Jack was used to playing, heavily restricted such a playstyle as one would need a dedicated warship and a crew of battle-hardened veterans to pull off such a stunt.

While he had militarised subsystems installed when he modified his ship, he had nowhere near the combat abilities to fight even a single warship head-on.

Instead, he had bought and upgraded his new ship on the same world he knew the princess would visit for her vacation. Then one of his underground contacts on the said world had captured the girl and delivered her to the ship when it was about to finish construction.

No one had connected him with the sudden disappearance of the princess and even when the ship was ready, only the necessary checks had been carried out when leaving the spaceport. After all, he had been on the planet long before the girl's disappearance and the local authorities could easily verify that he and his crew had only been working on the ship, apart from the occasional detour to the city's various taverns.

Now, one could ask why had he taken such a risky job in the first place. He had some friends and acquaintances that were high ranking members of House Vallian.

Well, the simple answer would be money. The game had a very easy to understand reward system, high risk, high reward. One could just play the od merchant and only travel between the planets of one solar system if that was desired. It would take some time and likey the lifespan of several characters, but it was entirely possible to make enough money for any endeavour that way.

On the other hand, taking risky and illegal jobs, such as fighting Xenos and pirates, stealing technology or smuggling illegal substances had a much higher profit margin.

Jack shook his head to sort out his thoughts. Arguing about the morality and difficulty of his task would lead him nowhere.

With a flick of his wrist, he brought up the map of the solar system they were currently in. In about 8 days they would reach the next warp point until the auto-pilot would suffice to stir the ship, but If he wanted to recruit more crew they would need to approach one of the nearby planets, the only problem was they all were firmly in the hand of house Vallian.

He was about to close the map again when an idea crossed his mind. Maybe there was a way to find some people that would stay with him even in the case House Valliant found out about his involvement in the kidnapping of the princess.

With a satisfied nod, he charted the new course, activated the manual controls and took the crew radio to hand.

"Attention everyone, this is your caption speaking. We will change our course slightly and reach the starport of the agricultural colony of Mykena in about two days. There we will take in some new crew, so make sure you all are on your best behaviour and the ship is squeaky clean."

Before anyone could answer he hung up again, gripped the controllers tight and brought the ship into a narrow curve, to get on the new course.

At first, he was slightly worried, but after piloting for a few hours it turned out to be unnecessary. Steering the ship felt just like in the game and the controls were just as responsive if not better.

The next few hours felt like a rush to him. He was flying the ship while slowly adjusting the now vocal AI to his liking, feeding him just the amount and type of information he needed at any given time.

After that, flying was just bliss. One after another he did different manoeuvres and tested his abilities as a pilot but found no faults. It was almost frightening how few differences he found between his old body and the feeling of inhabiting the new one. Everything just felt so natural and normal.

It was only when they approached the small spaceport in orbit around Mykena that Jack realise he had no actual plan for how to hire people. In the game there was a recruitment window, one could access after docking in the port, then he only had to choose the people he wanted and they would board the ship.

He thought about the problem while manually docking the spaceship at the spaceport. One of the spaceport administrators tried to radio him briefly, but someone else took the call before Jack could push it away.

After the docking process was completed, he decided to delegate the problem of recruiting. After mentally preparing himself, he dialled the number of the security officer.

It rang a few times and he was starting to wonder if she was talking to someone else, but then she picked up and he forgot about it.

"Yes, captain? What do you need me to do?"

"I was wondering, as the security officer, would you be interested in helping me recruit the new crew? I know its not your Job normally,"

He was interrupted by an enthusiastic scream and a slightly embarrassed answer a few seconds later.

"Yes, of cause! I thought you would never ask me."

She seemed a little bit too happy about him basically shifting part of his Job over to her, but he didn't mind.

"Great, then I would suggest you start and see how far you get and I will follow you so I can help out, should there need be"

"Yes, understood, father! Anything special you would like me to look out for?"

"Ah, yes. The Med Bay is understaffed, with only you around, also another mechanic or technician wound not hurt in the slightest. The other thing would be to prefer people, that want to leave Vallian space, our trip will bring us to the Steel Song territories soon, so maybe look for people, that would not make a fuss while we are there."

He could hear her typing his specifications into her wrist computer.

"Yes, I got that. And thank you for giving me this opportunity, dad."

He felt slightly embarrassed by her honest gratitude for him using her as a social guinea pig. Jack cleared his throat, to bridge the little gap in his speech.

"Yea, don't mention it, it's about time you get more involved in this whole operation. Truth be told, with the new ship I set it as one of my goals to teach you more about being a captain."

He couldn't clearly make out the sounds on the other side of the communicator, but somehow he knew she was very happy with what he had said.