September 27th, 8251

“Lawrence Warde. Born 8217, Azumire ventral wards, Sector H17. Conscripted into His Majesty's Navy in 8233 by order of the Ministry of Justice, went 'mustang' and accepted a commission in 8241. Graduated from the Naval Academy, served on seven different ships in a mere nine years, commanded small detachments and departments. Quite the interesting discipline record, though it has tapered off in recent years. You could probably make a fortune writing fictionalized versions of your escapades, though I suspect the Navy and the Ministry of Justice would require quite a few of the details be omitted. And enough prize money salted away and invested well enough to nearly retire on. So why should I accept your transfer request to the Surveyor's Corps, much less give you command of a ship?”

You sit upright in your chair and start unblinking at the uniformed bureaucrat from the Office of Ship Manning sitting behind the desk. Your left eye wants to twitch at his up-city accent and a corner of your mind is winding up to curse a blue streak at his presumptuous nature. Instead you compose yourself and respond.

“Officially? Because my aptitude tests, experience with small and tight-knit crews, and flexible approach to resolving problems and addressing anomalies is incredibly valuable to the Surveyor's Corps. Unofficially? Please check the requested posting sir.”

“The Night Horse? What about her?”

“Last of the Explorer class sir. I checked the crew listings before I put in my application. She has been without a crew for nearly a year now despite Lord Wynstryngham's publicly expressed wishes. I may not be the absolute highest grade of officer materiel sir, lacking as I do the providence of birth, but I have proved myself in His Majesty's service for nearly eighteen years now. Is it not best to have a Captain of a certain background to command a ship of the same?”

“Agreed, agreed. And equally unofficially, his Lordship has been riding my management about this matter. Which means that they have been riding me. There are a few other candidates that I know of being considered for that posting, but none have explicitly requested it. If you would be wiling to sign on again for an additional tour I think I can get you the slot.”

“And that would both meet and exceed your quota would it not sir? I think I could find myself amenable to signing such paperwork, though I'd prefer to read it over closely first.”

“Oh? Was it Greasy John who handled your last re-enlistment?”

“The same sir, myself and six hundred seventy four other poor souls.”

“I recall that incident, disgraceful is what it was. Take your time, though I expect an answer one way or the other by the end of the month.”

“Not a problem sir.”

“Fair warning though, your crew is likely to be a patchwork, and might not all make it in before the shakedown cruise at year's end.”

“Heard and understood sir. The paperwork if you would?”

“Here, with initials required flagged in orange and signatures in yellow.”

“Thank you sir.”

You stand, shake hands with the bureaucrat, and accept the thick folder with your other one. You turn and head out of the office, meandering your way back down unremarkable corridors to the exit, out to your aircar and thence back to your quarters. It promises to be a long night with the aid of a legal VI checking for trap clauses. You don't expect any, not after the Greasy John scandal, but you've learned to check anyway.

October 3rd, 8251

You pass the dockworkers by and head up the boarding ramp to the Night Horse. She won't be yours to command for another eight days, and isn't scheduled to re-launch until November 15th, but you have been cleared to move aboard. You figure it's best to do so, to become used to your new command and her oddities, while there might still be time to wheedle the yard into making small changes. You glance at the tablet in your off hand with the deck plan and shake your head. You had always wondered how old Lord Saltonstall had gotten this class past the famously conservative Office of Ship Construction. Now you know and the slight-of hand involved makes you shake your head.

You walk the corridors of the Night Horse nearly from memory despite this being your first time aboard her. This is only possible because Lord Saltonstall took the design for the Navy's Timbersnake class of long-range scouts and tweaked the design 'slightly'. Officially only a modification of an existing design, it only had to be checked over for structural soundness instead of going through a full review and battery of acceptance trials.

You muse over the changes from the other two Timbersnakes that you have served aboard as you walk towards the officer's quarters. Despite the crew being reduced from a hundred and twenty two souls down to just twelve, the life support equipment still needs to cover the same volume, so the venerable Lifespan Mk5 set was left alone. The Explorator Mk4 bridge layout was left alone, as was the Mk8 Deep Void Sensor suite. The Saturn Mk2 reactor and drive still powered and moved everything quite handily. The expanded supply vaults and hydrogen harvesting scoop were just the same. The cargo hold and shuttle bay were being modernized to handle new shuttles introduced in the twenty years since the Night Horse first launched. You had noticed dockworkers futzing over the banks of maneuvering thrusters, so you suspect that they are getting tuned up as well. The venerable old 'Hale Storm' grade 4 laser batteries were being replaced by newer 'Thunder Strike' Grade 5 emplacements if the focusing arrays being hoisted into place at both the prow and dorsal emplacements are anything to go by.

You enter officer country and stop as the first of the major changes becomes apparent. Every space that had once housed an officer, aside form the captain and the department heads, had been replaced by what you presume to be charging and storage racks for mobile automaton 'crew'. The twenty units tucked away in various corners all boasted enlarged 'heads' crammed full of communications gear and additional hardware. The 'junior officers' under your command, you surmise, are actually mobile command and control nodes for their more robust 'lower deck' kin. You promptly decide to call them Eggheads. Leaving the Eggheads to their electronic slumber you amble onwards and open the hatch to the captain's quarters.

The sight that greets you makes you wince. By city-side standards the quarters are tiny, no larger then a cheap apartment, but you haven't judged your quarters to those standards in quite some time. They are larger then your previous shipboard ones, but only by a smidgen, and crammed with all the equipment that you'd expect of officer's quarters twice their size. The result is a cramped, near claustrophobic space reminiscent of the one you had back when you were freshly conscripted.

Setting your kit bag on your bunk for lack of any other place to put it you settle down and pull up on the list of other changes. The familiar feeling you had stepping aboard has been shaken off and you have to wonder about the large cluster of cranes and work equipment amidships. Scrolling through to skim over the various system optimizations and modernization projects looking for replacements and fresh installations. The first you encounter is the crew accommodations. Seeing them as being updated to a new 'Minimalist mark one (star)' standard, you check over what that specification entails and groan.

With so few human crew aboard, and with the Night Horse being as cramped for space as all of her surviving Timbersnake kin, someone somewhere decided to reduce the human accommodations as much as was possible. Someone else took note of this and modified the layout, hence the (star) designation, to accommodate officers as well as enlisted. You pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration. At least the 'officer edition' actually include all of the comforts that you are actually going to need and use, but they still have no room for personal belongings or other keepsakes.

Scrolling further you notice that just about every core system has acquired a (star) designation for reduced volume, mass, and power requirements. You nod, note the progress of tech against time, and scroll on. The medical facilities have been upgraded to a newer version of the good old auto-doc with twelve whole individual pods, one for each possible crew member. The Particle Screens have been swapped out to a new-ish single-phase 'Repulsor' mark one (star) model more common to fast couriers or fleet screening units. While no heavier then the old 'Rampart' installation, they are proven to brush aside particles and small space debris more easily, allowing for higher top speeds in otherwise congested conditions.

The only other major alteration in the list of changes makes you wince. The warp drive and particle screens are being replaced with a near-prototype model, the Kleinova mark one (star). You can't blame the yardmaster for insisting on ditching the old and 'unreliable' Shrike drive given that it was only ever used on the Explorer class and had an operational catastrophic failure rate of twenty five percent even if you counted Nigh Horse's virgin drive in the numbers. But you have hear tales of the Kleinova drive and how temperamental they proved in the prototype stages. Night Horse being selected to test-bed a modified version in operational conditions has you a bit nervous.