A/N: Why? Because I can, mostly.
The mythos and history, both general and personal, will be explained in future chapters. This is not slash, although you can certainly see what you will in it.
Space opera time!
From the day she was set adrift into the Starsea, the quest for the pilgrim ship Albion has claimed thousands of lives. Pirates and bandits, dreamers and treasure hunters, she takes them all alike. Most die without ever knowing so much as a solid lead, killed by fellow hunters or thieves or an unfriendly region lord, or simply falling victim to the harsh toll of space travel. None ever manage to actually lay eyes on her.
So it is only fitting that the first people to finally find her never actually set out to do so.
The access hatch to the engine cooling chamber is designed with a slender person in mind and Arthur Pendragon has never been more grateful for his broad shoulders. He twists around to peer into the narrow slot beyond, trying to see around the man stuffed in there and see if he can spot the damage he knows is there.
"Find anything?" he asks.
"Yes," Elyan spits, and under the circumstances Arthur decides he can forgive the attitude. "I've found that Merlin's right; you're a prat. Mid-range spanner." And he throws his current tool, a laser cutter, at Arthur's head.
Excalibur pitches into a gentle roll as Arthur tries to catch the cutter. It slips free of his grasp and floats serenely away and Arthur lets it, focusing instead on freeing the requested spanner from the magnetic grip of the toolkit. The gravlock always shuts down first in case of an emergency so they're all used to working in zero-gravity conditions.
"Arthur?" Gwen calls over the shipwide comm. "We're still reading extreme heat buildup in the main portside engine."
"We're going to lose the whole chain," Elyan says as Arthur passes the spanner down.
"Any suggestions?" Arthur asks of both siblings.
"Shut down the engines," Elyan says instantly.
"No," Arthur says on a sigh, wiping the sweat off his brow with his wrist. "No, if we do that, they'll find us. We got lucky with that first patrol, but it won't happen again, and it won't be long before someone starts to wonder where they've got off to."
"Swallow your pride and contact Camelot," the other man continues, not slowed in the least by Arthur's logic.
"Cenred's men will pick up on it," Arthur replies. "We're too far into the dark reef. No ship from Camelot will reach us in time."
"Gwen, love," Elyan calls out. "You still there? Cut the comms, please, I have another suggestion for Arthur."
"All right, children, that's enough," Gaius interjects calmly before Arthur can start getting truly offended.
"The portside bulwark is open," Percival cuts in to report. A moment later he adds, "And likely to remain so for quite some time."
Arthur grits his teeth at the implication of yet further damage to his ship but swallows his protests. Excalibur might be his ship in name, but she's home to all of them.
"Go further into the reef," Lancelot's voice echoes over the comms. He sounds tired and beaten.
"I second that," Gwaine adds. "No one will follow us there, and if they do, they'll never find us. Excalibur's a tough girl, she can handle the reef."
Arthur looks at Elyan, eyebrows raised, silently asking. The engineer chews on his lip for a moment as he considers the suggestion.
"Short bursts with the main engines, use the propulsors to balance out," he says, nodding slowly. "Yeah, should work. We'll need to vent this room, though. Only way to keep the engine from overheating."
Arthur pushes away from the access hatch, giving Elyan room to maneuver.
"Do it," he says.
The shot that had crippled them was a lucky one, a one-in-a-million sort of thing. It hit the engine power distribution grid and caused a surge in the cooling system, shortcircuiting the whole system for the portside engine chain. They'll need to get outside to repair it fully, which means finding someplace with atmosphere since performing such delicate repairs in an evac suit is basically impossible. Aside from that, though, Excalibur held up beautifully under the onslaught, which really ought to surprise no one. Under her- carefully cultivated and maintained- shabby exterior is a sleek new Etherian-class cruiser, the golden dragon of Camelot proudly shining on her hull.
She's meant to have a crew of twenty, though, which means Arthur's motley band of nine work double time under the best of circumstances just to keep the ship running properly. Now, post-battle, they're all running on fumes and looking at hours more of hard work before they can relax.
Elyan stays near the system master control panel, making constant minute adjustments, and Arthur leaves him to it. He heads down to the main control room and reengages the gravlock, since there's no danger of it getting damaged and imploding. Then he calls up the damage report and gets to work.
Merlin finds him, some time later, still hard at work.
"There you are," Arthur says, stepping away from the control panel he'd ben half-buried in. "Where have you been, then? Slacking off?"
To his credit, Merlin doesn't take it personally. He just rolls his eyes and shoves something at Arthur. "I've been working, just like everyone else. And now I'm going around making sure you all eat something. Gaius' orders."
Arthur grimaces at the ration bar he's been handed. A full meal, compressed into a bar the size of a finger. Delicious. "I would eat if you would give me real food," he says sulkily.
"Spoiled," Merlin accuses good-naturedly. "I grew up eating stuff like that."
"No wonder you're so scrawny." It's not that bad, actually. The trick is to be hungry enough to be willing to eat your own arm. Certainly Arthur has eaten worse things, although he doesn't care to remember any of them right now.
He looks down the corridor as he gnaws on the ration bar, looking at his ship. He's already checked up on his crew, hunted down each one of them just so he can see they're all safe with his own eyes, and now he's obsessively focused on Excalibur.
"Shouldn't have turned broadside to the second cruiser," Merlin says slyly, seeing where his thoughts are headed.
"Shut up, Merlin," Arthur retorts instantly, as he is meant to. He takes the proffered water bottle from the younger man. "The engine repair is outside work, so when you're done schlepping for Gaius, head up to the bridge and find us a safe place to land. Preferably somewhere we haven't been before."
"Somewhere they don't know us," Merlin translates. Arthur sticks the last bite of ration bar into his mouth and dives back into the control panel, not dignifying that with a response.
There is some debate, amongst those to whom such things are important, as to exactly what the dark reef is.
Scientifically speaking, the dark reef is merely one of the many unexplainable phenomena humanity has run into out amongst the stars. Some people maintain it's nothing more than a black nebula, but others say such a thing isn't possible. Common knowledge, and all that is important to travelers, is that it is navigable with a little practice and a lot of luck, rather like the ocean reef it is named after.
What else is known is that it buffers the northern boundary of the settled regions from the vast Starsea beyond, and that like any other sea, odd things sometimes wash up. One such thing slumbers and waits.
Then a ship comes into the reef, moving in a style that can only be described as 'limping'. It cuts straight across, as if to take the short path through the dark reef and into the Starsea beyond, only to turn sharply and skate along the boundary, plowing straight through the worse of the reef. If it's not graceful, it at least is determined, and nothing so much as slows it down despite its apparent weakness.
Until it crosses paths with the hibernating behemoth.
The ship staggers on as, deep in the reef beyond, something far bigger stirs.
Leon is the shift pilot, Merlin finds when he comes onto the bridge. The blond man gives him a tired smile in greeting before turning back to his task. Through the viewport Merlin can see a sea of inky black with an occasional oily shimmer of color to catch the eye.
In the seat beside Leon is Gwaine, sprawled out uncomfortably, snoring and drooling. Merlin shakes his head at him as he heads over to the navcomp. He doesn't sit down, though, instead leaning against the console and giving himself a moment's rest. Contrary to Arthur's implications, Merlin works as hard as anyone else on this ship, possibly even harder. Then again, none of the others have the advantages or responsibilities he has.
Merlin gazes out the viewport, eyes focused vaguely on the horizon, as he thinks about nothing in particular, giving himself a chance to relax for a moment.
Then he blinks. Horizon?
"Leon," he says warily, staring keenly now at the blue line running across the bottom of the viewport. Leon, flying by computer and not bothering with looking as the view is hardly worth the effort, gives a questioning hum.
The blue line grows thicker, and Merlin hears something loud and heavy clank, as if from a distance.
"Leon!" he yelps, and the pilot looks up just as the proximity alarms all start going insane.
It looks like a mouth, Merlin thinks. A giant, mechanical, blue-lit mouth yawning open before them. It's far too regular and symmetrical to be natural, though, so his guess is more like a docking bay on a ship. A very large ship, as Excalibur could fit in the bay twice over with room to spare. He wraps his hands around the navigator's chair and leans back, as if anything he could do now would help, as a newly awakened Gwaine curses a blue streak and Leon works feverishly to break free of the gentle but firm hold pulling them in. Then another layer is added to the chaos on the bridge as Arthur storms in, demanding answers. Arthur is hardly a fool, though, and quickly realizes he's only getting in the way. Instead he zeroes in on the one person not actually doing anything and strides over.
"What's going on?" he asks.
"I don't know," Merlin says, honestly enough. "It just appeared."
"Excalibur knows something we don't, I think," Gwaine says. "She's reading it, whatever it is, as an ally."
"What do the scans say?" Arthur demands.
"No life forms, stable life support, power readings consistent with human tech," Gwaine reads off. "A space station, maybe? Big girl, whatever it is."
"No life signs," Arthur echoes. "Not even stasis signals?"
"Nothing," Gwaine confirms.
The bridge is cast in blue light by now, Excalibur completely within the docking bay. Merlin listens as the bay door rumbles shut behind them and looks at Arthur as it seals shut with a pneumatic hiss.
"Might as well land, then," Arthur says philosophically. "But keep weapons hot. And no one goes outside, for any reason, unless I say so." He takes one last look around the slice of the docking bay the viewport shows them, then turns and heads off the bridge.
"I didn't think space stations got this big," Merlin says after a moment.
"They don't," Leon says. "Not unless one of the region lords is using the reef to hide something."
Somehow, Merlin does not find this reassuring.
"She hit us with an override code," Gwaine says some time later, while they're waiting for their captain to decide what to do next. "Excalibur had no choice but to do what she was told."
"Any guesses who she is?" Merlin asks.
"Yes, actually," Gwaine answers, and says nothing else.
There is no true computer expert on the crew, so Arthur has to satisfy himself with Lancelot's above-average skill. He waits impatiently as Lancelot backtraces the override code Gwaine had already identified. Like Gwaine, Arthur has his suspicions and chooses not to voice them.
"We're in," Lancelot says, surprised by the ease of it. "That was fast."
"I just want a name," Arthur tells him.
"Verification and…" Lancelot pauses as the requested information appears on-screen. "By the gods," he breathes.
Arthur takes a single deep, steadying breath. "Well, this is going to cause some problems," he says, mostly to himself.
On the screen are three simple lines:
Pilgrim Ship AO-05
Chartered 08 Nov, 2120
Designation: Albion