AN: this fic will contain genderbend trolls and humanized trolls as well as troll versions of some humans. And obviously, none of the characters appearing in this story belong to me.
Chapter 1
Tavros smiled as his hands danced over the organic computer, the machine reacting more to his will then the press of his fingers over the buttons. His computer(he called her Tinkerbull, she seemed to like it) twittered back at him, spitting readings out on the screens in front of him. He nodded his head. Good, good. All the readings looked normal. A red line in the code caught his eye. A chip had to be replaced. He sighed. "I'll, get those quick, Tink. Hold on." He didn't need to talk at all, really, the computer could hear his thoughts just fine he knew, but he liked to.
He hummed a tune as he pulled himself towards the computer he was hanging onto and pushed himself away, using the momentum to turn himself around in the zero-gravity environment. He loved having a deck to himself. It allowed him turn off the artificial gravity without bothering anyone else. The feeling of floating weightless like he was made him feel free.
Their ship, Heir of Breath, or HOB for short, was a small ship, designed for four people to survive on. She was divided into 4 sections. Each designed for one member of her four man crew.
He caught himself on the doorway and maneuvered himself in the small cramped room. the only things that were in the room were a wall of white containers and a small bench. Each container would grow a few specific pieces. He drifted over to the one closest to him and slid it open with practice ease. Inside was a small chip floating in a pinkish liquid. He wasted no time in taking it out. He hit a button on the side, telling the system to re-grow the copy he had taken.
These ships really were a marvel. They were the newest models, all their electrical components were also semi-organic and bio-engineered. Everything that they needed (well accept for things like the outer hull) could be grown. It cut down on the amount of supplies they had to carry, though they had to grow the large components in smaller parts...
He pushed himself back to the doorway, then to the part of the ship which needed to have the chip replaced. He tilted his head as he commanded the ship to pop the hatch so he could work on her.
That was his job, he was a mechanic. Trained to look after the ship assigned to his squadron. It was easy for him, being a technopath. It allowed him to connect and command the machines without touching the controls. He could override everything and make them do what he wanted, well, most of the time... He rubbed idly at the side of his head, where a thin, long scar ran across his temple, identical to the one on the other side.
All technopaths had to get these modifications. His father, Rufio Nitram, also had them. They were designed to enhance a technopath's abilities, but it didn't work with him. He'd lost most of his natural ability when he woke up from the surgery. They couldn't explain what had happened, not that it mattered now. It was too risky to try to reverse it after. He was only thankful it hadn't taken away his ability to talk with the machines, which he loved. Machines never judged and never expected things of you. He liked that.
Tink tittered musically in the back of his mind. That was one of the reasons why, when he'd been assigned the new ship, the first thing he had done was replace the system in charge of his section with an older computer he kept. The AIs, the longer they were around, the more personality they got, and Tink was the most pleasant one he had ever met, she was also prone to singing. It made him miss some of his other machines.
An angry buzzing filtered into his head, made him wince. It was the ships primary computer. He didn't like talking to it that much. It was crabby and abrasive, often leaving him with a dull headache. "Just, hold a second, ok?" he muttered as he switched out the chips.
The computer, however, was always rather impatient. It ignored his thoughts, and immediately began to throw the results of its daily scans at him, making it hard to concentrate. He shut his eyes to better listen. It must be important if it ignored him, right?
The scans revealed nothing abnormal, which made him frown in confusion. There must have been something.. "There isn't anything else?" There was more buzzing (it really had one of the worst voices) before it let him know that he had to get to the main bridge. It cut out as soon as he gave an affirmative response. Why couldn't it just tell him?
The panel closed itself and he pushed off of the wall, heading to the doorway that connected him to the rest of the ship. He hit the opposite wall, turned himself around and dragged himself to the wheel chair that was strapped down. He quickly settled in and with a quick thought, the gravity was restored.
It was always such a jolt, suddenly regaining the feeling of falling under his weight. His two uselss legs were flopped outside of his wheel chair and he had to move them and strap them in. Tink released his chair without him asking and opened the door.
He didn't have one of those electric wheelchairs, by choice. He liked having to work out his upper body, kept him fit, kind of. The ship was small, so there weren't really many places to go. There were only four sections, branching off from a main 'hub' of sorts where they ate and planned. It was where he went.
The doors opened to the central hub. Sollux was there, fiddling with something. He raised his head at the sound of the door. "Hey." was all that he said as he turned back to what he was working on. Tavros didn't mind. Sollux was almost always suffering from a migraine and didn't like to talk unless he had to, though that might have also been because of his lisp. Tavros had hated talking when he couldn't pronounce things right, or when he stuttered. He still didn't like to sometimes, though he was so comfortable around his three squadron mates that stuttering was rarely a problem around them anymore.
A piece of paper lifted up into the air in front of Sollux, who studied it closely before turning back to his work. Sometimes Tavros was jealous of his squadron mate's abilities and his control over them. But would never really want them. They made Sollux powerful, an asset in battle, but they were also not natural. Most of the manufactured psychics had a hard time living outside the labs. Sollux had been lucky, and only had to deal with heightened senses, though it still caused him severe migraines.
The main computer terminal sat in the middle of the room. It was one of the only computers to not have a screen. It instead had a holographic interface. Right now it was showing a small blinking light somewhere in the star system they were currently drifting through.
"Hey Sollux? How long has this, uh, been blinking?" Tavros asked as he ran his hands over the control panel, lightly touching the buttons. The closer he was to it, especially if he was touching it, the better he was at communing.
Sollux ground his teeth and turned around. "I don't know. It's blinking?" He twisted around in his chair, his little project, a small weapon, lay in pieces.
"Uh, yeah." he reached forwards with one hand to touch on the small blinking light. It refused to open it without verification from him. All crew members could access anything on the ship, it seemed rather silly for them to have verification online, but they couldn't turn it off.
He drew his hand back quickly as the whole system lit up, lines of text flashing up before being replaced by another line. Tavros tried to follow the lines, but even he couldn't. The ship had stopped responding besides giving an vague impression of annoyance at being bothered.
"What the fuck is it doing?" Sollux had appeared over his shoulder, his eyes were probably narrowed behind his tinted goggles.
"I-I don't know. It's not responding..." He tried again to get the computer to respond, becoming more and more insistent. Finally, lines of code it had been spewing merged into a single line of text. "What..?"
-I hope this motherfuckin' reaches someone. This is ICRA 9. We are stranded, our engines are fucking gone. If there is anyone in this quadrant, show a sister some assistance.-
There was a strange symbol after it, it looked like the symbol for Capricorn.
"An SOS message..?"
"Can't be an SOS. There is fucking no one in this section. There shouldn't be.." Sollux leaned over and started hitting keys. He was right. There should be no one here. Earth had no colonies here, human exploration hadn't ever ventured this far out before. His ship's job was to chart new space and locate planets capable of population or sustaining life.
Sollux let out an annoyed huff as he brought the star map back up, but the location of where the distress signal was coming from wasn't showing. He pursed his lips "Get the computer to do some scans or something..."
Tavros nodded as he ordered the computer to do some scans, searching for lifeforms and ships. "We should go wake up Karkat..."
Sollux grunted. "I'll go get our leader. You go scan some things. See if you can reply." Sollux moved towards the control room, where Karkat's room was. There was a blue glow around the parts that Sollux had left lying around. They fit themselves back together and drifted towards his hands.
Tavros called up a keypad, and it appeared in front of him. He hoped his message would make it through.
-Hi. This is the HOB. Can you give us your current co-ordinates? We might be able to help.-
He heard some yelling and the sounds of something crashing at the end of the hall that Sollux had disappeared down. Karkat should be here soon. The angry buzzing returned.
-Thank the false motherfucking Mirthful Messiahs. You're a lifesaver, motherfucker.-
