Maya had been on a handful of starships in her life, most of them taken in transit to Pandora from Athenas. None of them had evoked the feelings the one she was currently settling into did.

It was a lot more spacious, for one thing. The various passenger transports and liners she'd been on had been built for passenger capacity, not comfort. The first shuttle off Athenas had been little more than a flying sardine tin, every occupant literally rubbing shoulders with the person on either side for several hours. Maya's hopes for a little more personal space on the interstellar transport had been dashed when she learned the three hundred passengers would be bunking six to a miniscule room. With one co-ed communal shower for the whole passenger compliment. For two weeks.

It had been a long flight.

This ship, though...

She'd eyed the circular hull on the way in, and was reasonably certain of her estimates. The diameter of the hull was roughly five hundred feet, and she'd counted three decks as they maneuvered to dock with the underside of the hull. Even without seeing the room layout and a sloppy run-through on the math, that meant far more space than seven people would need to be comfortable.

"Hey! That's the room I wanted!"

"No way, bucko! I'm the engineer, I get the room closest to the engines!"

Probably, anyway.

Maya stuck her head out in the hallway and looked to the left. About three doors down, Axton and Gaige were squaring off in front of one of the cabin hatches. "Why are you two fighting? We've got enough empty rooms to go around three times over, at least."

"I always bunk as close as possible to the engines," Axton complained, still glaring at Gaige. "Whenever I don't, something always happens to the ship."

"You're superstitious now?" Gaige scoffed.

"It's happened four times in ten years," Axton insisted. "The first two times, we got shot down flying into contested space on a mission."

"So you flew into a war zone and got shot. It happens."

"The third time is when it got eerie," he went on. "I'd been booted out because we took on some more senior soldiers during transport to our next mission. Two hours later, the ship ran into a stray mine from a war that ended years ago. Hit the bridge, blew out the hull, and killed fifty people."

"Pure coincidence!"

"The last one was the clincher for me," Axton said. "I'd just gotten married. Sarah and I were in her cabin, when out of nowhere, BANG!"

"Isn't that what's supposed to happen on wedding nights?" Maya asked innocently.

"Not when the 'bang' is three pirate ships attacking your carrier," Axton said grimly. "They were on us before we even saw 'em coming. The ship took on boarders, and we had to repel the bastards hand-to-hand." He grinned a little. "The space jockeys were pretty damn glad they were ferrying us along that night." His smiled grew wider. "The pirates were just as sorry they interrupted Sarah's wedding night. That lady could go to town when she got pissed."

Gaige folded her arms and leaned against the door. "Nothing in that story convinces me I need to give up my room, soldier boy."

Axton sighed and tossed up his hands. "Okay, how about this. You give me this room and I'll..." he gritted his teeth, "I'll let you take apart one of my turrets to study, so long as you don't break it."

She straightened up, arms dropping to her sides. "You're serious?"

"Promise," Axton said gloomily. "Full deconstruction, too, not just digging through my ECHO to get the specs."

Maya covered her mouth to hide her smile as Gaige began to practically salivate at the idea of examining Axton's precious turret. "Doesn't that mean you'd be the first non-Dahl member to get a detailed look at the insides of one of those, Gaige?"

"Yes." Gaige's voice was torn as she considered. "I know some of the details, but the deep level workings are trade secrets." She glanced at the door behind her and tossed her hands up. "Fine, you can take the room. But I get to play with your turret for at least two weeks!"

"Two weeks?" Salvador's voice drifted out from his open door, and a second later, his head appeared. "Is this trip gonna take that long?"

They glanced at each other for a second. "Actually, I don't know," Maya realized. "We haven't set a course yet." She looked around the hall. "Have Zero or Cassidy picked out quarters?"

"Actually, I think they headed straight for the bridge," Gaige said, starting off down the hall. "Come on, let's get up there." As she walked past one of the doors, she gave it several quick thumps with her metal fist. "Krieg! Get out here, we're picking what planet to go to!"

"Delicious!" The cabin door slid open, and Krieg bounded out into the hall. "I'll get my carving knives ready to dice the turkey!"

Maya kept pace next to Axton as Gaige and Krieg hurried off to the elevator. "Tell me something," she said. "Why pearlescent?"

"What?"

"You called it a pearelscent level starship," Maya said. "You remember how we tend to react when we get a piece of gear like that?"

Axton thought for a second, smiling. "I remember you reading four passages praising six different gods in three languages."

"It's not just me," Maya said hastily, blushing slightly. "When Salvador got a pearlescent, he wept tears of joy for an hour."

"It was a gun that reloaded while I was shooting!" Salvador protested. "How could I not?"

"When Gaige got one, she jumped up and down and squealed for fifteen minutes."

"Yeah, that was cute."

"And I seem to recall you actually slept with yours," Maya went on. "In fact, I distinctly remember that you somehow almost shot your face off in your sleep."

"Good times," Axton said dryly. "Your point?"

"If I'm to have, as Gaige calls it, a 'lootgasm' over our new ship, I'd like to know why. What makes it that good?"

Axton shuddered. "First off, don't use that word again. It works when Gaige says it, but on you it just sounds... wrong."

"Muy creepy," Salvador agreed.

"And for your question..." he trailed off as they reached the elevator, considering what to say. "Do you know anything about ships?"

"I know Sanctuary was buried in the ground for thirty years and I loathe cheap transports."

"So no." The lift doors slid open and the five of them piled in. "Well, the short version is that this model of ship is almost nonexistent on the public market these days, and it's because they were just so damn good."

"How's that, now?"

"When the HarrFord company produced this line, the goal was to make it a highly modifiable flying luxury fortress," Axton explained. "They set up a basic hull design, then let the buyer custom order the interior layout, the weapons package, everything. And they also included enough other perks that once you had your ship, you'd never have to make planetfall again if you didn't want to." He rubbed the elevator wall fondly as the lift began to ascend. "If you had a 7700, you were basically king of wherever you went."

"So why are they so scarce?" Maya asked. "Didn't they live up to their reputation?"

"I'm guessing money," Gaige offered. "Probably overcharged themselves into bankruptcy."

"Nope," Axton said, shaking his head. "They just sold to the wrong group. HarrFord got an order for something like a hundred ships, all with maximum weapon loadouts and tricked out to the gills with every extra imaginable. When the buyers came to the shipyards to pick them up, they turned out to be a band of mercs gone seriously rogue."

Maya winced. "Oh dear."

"The mercs tried to steal the ships and kill the dockworkers, but it didn't go like they planned." Axton sighed. "Before they were slaughtered, a handful of the workers managed to start engine overloads on every ship in the production yard. Blew the whole place and everyone in it straight to hell. With the loss of their primary shipyard, and no way to recoup their losses, HarrFord ended up closing its doors less then a year later."

"Leaving a handful of these babies flying around," Gaige said. "I wonder how One got hold of it?"

The elevator slid to a halt as they reached the bridge. "Maybe Cassidy-" Maya's voice broke off as the door slid completely open. "Oh, my god."

A vast transparent dome surrounded them, putting the entire galaxy on display. The narrow crescent of Pandora's rim peeked over the edge of the hull. Nothing interfered with the view of the stars beyond, no metallic struts, no hull, no glow of a forcefield. There wasn't even an artificial light fixture to be seen, leaving the area illuminated by the light of the stars and reflected from Pandora itself.

It was like walking in open space.

"Galactic beauty, Impressively majestic." Zero's voice echoed throughout the dome. "A stunning display."

"That's putting it mildly," Maya said. She kept turning around as she moved across the room, trying to drink in the entire view at once.

"Seems like style over substance," Gaige scoffed. She sounded impressed, but far less awed than Maya. "A dome like this doesn't offer a whole lot of protection in a firefight, for one thing. That goes double if this really is the bridge, too. One lucky shot, the whole place decompresses, and you've lost your command center."

"Not likely," Axton disagreed. "HarrFord didn't make second-rate ships. If this dome is here, it's artistic and functional. I'd bet if you check the specs, you'd find it could take a hit from a nuke and still be fine."

"Accurate assessment," Cassidy's voice called out. "This dome is designed to absorb any damage without detriment." A white-orange glow filtered into the air, illuminating a throne-like chair in the center of the room, the sole furnishing of the whole deck. The figure seated in it waved her hands, and several more glowing holographic panels flashed into existence, making a veritable wall of light. "Moreover, the command is mobile. Maneuvers and operational minutiae can be managed from anywhere."

"And we do have shields," Zero added. "Fear not for your safety, Gaige. We can take a hit."

"Fine, fine." Gaige glanced at Axton as the group headed toward the center of the room. "How do you know so much about these ships, anyway?"

"One, I'm a guy. That means knowing about high performance machines is in my blood," Axton quipped. "Two, I spent a lot of time being ferried from war to war on ships, meaning there were space jockeys around all the time, and they'd talk ships for hours if you let 'em. I picked up a lot just from their chatter." He stared up at the dome as they reached Cassidy's chair. "I'm actually a little surprised you don't know about this ship, little miss 'I'm the engineer.'"

"Give me a week and I'll know this ship better than the designers," Gaige retorted. "What are you up to, Cassidy?"

"Inputting information and taking inventory," Cassidy said. Her fingers danced through the air, leaving trails of light behind. "Crew compliment and celestial charts required changes, while supply status needed assessing." With one last flourish, all but one of the glowing screens vanished. "It's complete. The ship is set to do whatever we will it."

"Then let's get goin'!" Salvador punched his fist into his palm. "Let's head straight for the closest Vault world and open that sucker up!"

"Sounds like a plan," Maya agreed. "Cassidy, please bring up the star chart from the Vault Key and overlay our current position."

Cassidy nodded and waved her hands again.

Maya gasped in shock, and several others let out similar noises of surprise. The galaxy had erupted into the room, filling the entire dome. Solar systems whirled around them, detailed marble-sized planets spinning around burning fist-sized suns. As Maya spun around, dazed by the starfield, she saw many of the blue orbs had Vault symbols floating over them.

"I take my place in the heavens," Krieg said. His normally savage voice sounded hushed and almost reverent. "Here, we are the gods."

"I integrated the information into our navigation interface," Cassidy explained. "To which world shall we wend our way?"

Salvador looked around at the floating spheres. "This one's closest," he pointed out. As he gestured to the image of the planet, it expanded to the size of a basketball, and words blazed around it. "Huh. This says it's pretty much an empty rock, though. No air."

"We can't go to a dead moon for our first new Vault!" Gaige insisted. "We need something exciting to tell the others about when we call! Here!" She touched another planet's image. "The database says this is a jungle world. Tell me that wouldn't be cool!"

"Sure, trudging through a humid jungle again," Axton said flatly. "Like we didn't get enough of that back in Aegrus. Plus, it's really close to a major shipping lane. Someone might have started developing it by now." He tapped another planet on the other side of the room. "This one looks good. It's got a nice temperature, it's out of the way, and-"

"This one."

The others turned. "What was that, Maya?"

Maya passed her hand through one of the planets, almost at the edge of the dome. It grew until it hovered in her palm, a strange mottled-blue color. "This is where we should go first."

Salvador trotted over and peered at the words floating over his head. "It says here no one's been to that planet in fifty years. That means we'd have a clear shot at it, at least."

"Yeah, but that's a long way out there," Axton protested. "If this map's to scale, that trip will takes months."

"Six weeks of flight time," Zero corrected. "The engines on this vessel Are extremely fast."

"That's still a long time to spend cooped up, even in a comfortable ship," Axton complained. "I'd know, I've done it before."

"Yeah, yeah, you've been all over getting taken to wars," Gaige snapped. More calmly, she asked, "Why that one, Maya?"

"I'm... I'm not really sure," Maya admitted, shaking her head. "It's just... I look at this world, and I feel like it's where we should go." She shrugged. "Sorry."

"Well, let's put it to a vote," Axton said. "I vote we head for my little planet over there. The one that's ten days away, instead of forty-two."

"The far-flung sun!" Krieg snarled. "Across the ocean I will go!"

"Why am I not surprised," Axton said dryly. "Who else? Gaige?"

"Mmmmm..." Gaige glanced back and forth between the two holograms. "You already got one thing outta me today, soldier. I'm with Maya on this one." She grinned. "Besides, six weeks of travel time means I can have two full weeks to mess around with your turret. If I pick your little world, I might get half that before I'd have to start putting it back together."

"Little twerp," Axton grumbled. "All right, then. What about you, Zero? What's your vote?"

Zero shrugged. "No real preference," he said. "If I were forced to decide, I would say closer."

"Two-three," Gaige said. "What about you, Cass?"

"Me?" Cassidy squeaked. "I'm no mighty hunter, merely the pilot."

"Yeah, you're the pilot," Gaige stressed. "So as the pilot, what's your opinion on where we fly to?"

Cassidy looked between the two holographic worlds. "Um..."

"Don't sweat it, pilota," Salvador interrupted suddenly. "I vote we head out here, too."

"Are you serious, man?" Axton looked unhappily at him. "I figured you'd want to get back to shooting things as fast as you could."

"I've been shooting things my whole life," Salvador retorted. "I've never ridden in anything this comfy, though. I wanna enjoy it."

Axton sighed and tossed his hands in the air. "Okay, I'm outvoted. Let's go to the edge of the galaxy. I just hope you all don't go stir crazy on each other."

Maya sighed and blinked as the hologram disappeared. She felt like a strange weight had been lifted from her mind. "Thanks, guys."

"No sweat, chica," Salvador assured her. "We got your back."

"I'd gut a snow lizard for you!" Krieg proclaimed.

Gaige made a face. "Bleah. And with that mental image, what say we get going?"

Maya nodded and turned back to the center of the room. "We've got our destination, navigator. Let's go hunting."

Cassidy waved her hands and the wall of glowing panels reappeared. Another quick sequence of gestures, and a low hum filled the ship as the engines began to power up. With one last flourish, the ship spun away from Pandora flew into the dark emptiness, heading for the edge of space.

The small crew stood quietly for a few minutes, watching the stars drift past. Finally, Salvador cleared his throat. "Anyone up for poker?"

[And so the trip begins. New chapters of this little interquel (or Presequel, as they're apparently called in the BL universe) will be up roughly Saturday morning/Friday night, depending on your part of the world. Hope ya like, and thanks for reading!]