"Course to Parthia IV jump-site buoy plotted, engaging engines," Carrion calmly stated, the faintest vibration felt through the hull of the ship as the engines kicked into gear. "Statement: I am afraid the ships' assignment in system is also classified."
With that matter dealt with and a long flight ahead of you, there was some time to get to know the ship and its accommodations a bit better. The previous owners had only seemed to use 8 of the staterooms as actual living quarters. The rooms were sparingly furnished and devoid of decorations, though that could be attributed to the ship being used to repay some debts. There was a bed, complete with a 0G harness, a table and chair attached to the floor by magnets, basic sanitary facilities... So far only one stateroom had been claimed - third from the front on the starboard side, where miss Ernal was currently getting her beauty sleep, the others were still up for grabs.
The other four staterooms had been repurposed for other uses - the second one from the front on the starboard side had been made into a kitchen, though the supplies you'd been provided with at the station were quite cheap and could only be called food by the most generous (at least it contained nutrients and was intended for human consumption). Its opposite number on the port side was a social room with a bigger table and a few more chairs, while the two foremost staterooms... well, whatever furnishings had been there had already been removed, so the rooms themselves were pretty much bare.
Should anyone be watching the bridge and controls, they would eventually see the Blue Crow arrive at the jump-point for the Parthia system. The view here was uninteresting in the extreme - far above the orbital planes and away from the system star, it had an overabundance of clear open space, taken up only by a buoy that processed incoming and outgoing jump coordinates. With no ships in sight, those on the bridge could watch as the sensor suite was deployed and the holographic display cycled through a number of profiles before settling on one. Within a minute of arriving at the jump-point, the word "SCANNING" appeared in big letters on the bridge display.
It was at least another hour of nothing exciting at all before the first results started coming back. The "SCANNING" message shrunk down a bit, and the bridge display began to scroll columns of letters and numbers. Those with a bit more grounding in the sciences might recognise chemical symbols, mostly various metal elements. Over time, the numerous readings got filtered, a few entries being marked out if only for a few moments. Survey work only really got interesting once something was found...
As the scanning went on, a small display of the Parthia system was visible in the corner, a vague cloud spreading over it as the scanner added possible results to the map. The most obvious was the thick ring-like cloud, no doubt the system's asteroid belt... a few larger clouds signified planets, and a few more tiny clouds away from the planets could probably be attributed to rogue asteroids, comets, and other such space junk. Another hour passed by as the scans became more precise, the clouds on the display fading, becoming replaced by faintly glowing spheres, then eventually by brightly glowing dots.
Finally, the ship intercom sparked to life with Carrion's usual voice: "Request: Crew report to bridge."
