The Warp journey from Procyon back to Viking is as swift and as smooth as you have come to expect from Yasha. Soon after exiting the Warp, the Aegis is entering Viking orbit and Zheeves is communicating with the Master of the Pilgrim Ship Cambrian. They are finishing up some final preparations, and will need about a month to get everything squared away. This is just fine by you, as it will give the Aegis time to top off her supplies, for the crew to get some rest and relaxation, and for your officers to do a bit of shopping.

Soon after you make port, Morrigan is off to expand your Armsman core, both in terms of manpower and in terms of firepower. Two weeks later, she is drilling about fifty new people, with your original set of ten armsmen as the command team. Six fireteams are set up as five-man rifle squads, two more fireteams -- inevitably lead by Jenkins and Leroy -- are equipped with shotguns for the close assault role, and the last two fireteams are configured as heavy support and kitted out with medium machine guns, colloquially known as heavy stubbers.

Zheeves is overseeing the replenishment of the crew and supplies, and can be occasionally overheard griping at the fact that he can't get better crews for the wages he is offering. Given that your current crew is shaping up quite nicely, you let it slide for now.

Simo and Frank set about acquiring hardened voidsuits for everyone, and then Jace spends quite a bit of time adapting both his and Simo's to work with their existing cybernetics. His so that he can still manipulate things properly even while wearing the suit. Simo's suit is changed so that he can still 'plug in' to the Aegis while suited up.

Vir spends the four weeks both training with Morrigan and in meditations. Whatever Lord Pyrus did to get a communications channel established obviously was tiring for him. You debate asking some questions, but decide instead to simply reprimand Vir for not warning you that Lord Pyrus was a Space Marine before meeting him. Given that even Vir did not know Lord Pyrus was working for the Inquisition, you and he are both somewhat worried. Having an Inquisitor poking around in your business is rarely a good thing, so you come to an agreement that Lord Pyrus should only be contacted when it is absolutely necessary to do so.

Yasha spends quite a bit of time visiting House Suarlance researching something related to Navigators, though you decide not to press the issue. If it is important to the well-being of the Aegis and her crew, you feel that she would tell you. She also manages to find time to do some clothes shopping, as you spot her in a few new outfits.

You decide to split your time between getting to know the Master of the Cambrian and poking around into the history of the Aegis some more. The Cambrians Master, one Robert Santon Pierre, comes across as a typical independent shipmaster: pious, stoic, and more concerned with the state of his ship and crew than his passengers. Given that he seems like a competent enough sort, and is suitably grateful for the extra time to prepare his ship before departing, you leave him to his own preparations.

Your digging into the history of Aegis leads to little new information, so you leave a few less-than-promising leads to a couple of Naval Historians and instead dig into the history of House Von Sebastion a tad more. Your House has held a warrant of trade for some time, but no ship since one of your great-great-ancestors managed to lose the bulk hauler Pegasus. Until you salvaged and repaired the Aegis, of course. But that means that your warrant is still quite renowned, at least among those institutions that care about such things. it may not matter to much at the moment, but as you rebuild the House Von Sebastion name, old connections may start coming to the surface, along with old rivalries of course.

With your departure date approaching, you run into a slight complication: Robert assumed that the Cambrian would be leading, with the Aegis along as a gunslinger in case things went sideways. You on the other hand assumed that the Cambrian had requested an escort because they expected things to go sideways and that the Aegis would be breaking trail for the Cambrian.