Having finished feeding on Victoria's fear Mark grabbed the edge of the hatch and pulled himself over her before he sat down in the pilot seat and put his hand on the exposed Ficer crystal, within a few moments he had powered on the drive
"Alright, I'll go for a quick supercruise to get us out of here, brace for acceleration"
Victoria remained silent and quickly secured both Bob and Ellen against the wall on the opposite side of the canopy before she laid herself flat against it too, seeing they had taken position Mark accelerated the ship and powered on the FTL drive before jumping into supercruise
"...Alright, punch out in 5"
While only half a minute had of supercruise had passed, Mark was satisfied with getting a few hundred light seconds away from their previous spot so he punched out of supercruise again and powered down the drives after zeroing their velocity
"Good, now please take care of the 2 of them, I'll go do some maintenance on the ship"
Victoria nodded, she had been silent since Mark fed on her negative emotions, he didn't mind her lack of response, as general silence was one of the more pleasant reactions he had faced after feeding on a person that was still alive
'There's a lot of work to do… Oh well, maintenance will be the easy part'
Mark pulled himself out into the hallway where he opened a maintenance hatch and slipped down into a crawlspace, from here he found some patched Ficer crystal, exposed the crystal, and interfaced with the ship directly for some light insurance
'Alright, a 10000-character-length passcode for main and FTL drive access should keep Bob and Ellen from doing anything stupid until I can convince them I won't skin them alive and dump their bodies in the cold void of space… Now back to making sure this hunk of junk actually makes it to a station in one piece…'
Most of the maintenance Mark did over the next few hours were Ficer crystal rewiring, The ship-grade crystal was built both with redundancies and a self-repair mechanism to fix limited damage, but the actual repair needed to be carried out by a specialist in a specialized facility, thus when breaks and faults appeared, it was common to do Patchwork repairs by adding additional Ficer crystal that would 'bridge over' and 'mend' the breaks
'The real problems arrive when you have more patchwork than manufacturer-grade Ficer… While this ship isn't quite at the 50% mark, it's still in the high 40% mark'
While Mark wasn't a Ficer specialist, but he had an innate connection to the fabricated crystal, this combined with his inhuman mind and concentration, he made do rather well still
'... Though I am sure Luna or any other machine spirits would do better than me, this should still help quite a bit'
By the time Bob and Ellen had come to and been brought up to speed on their current situation by Victoria, Mark had brought the patchwork Ficer reliance down close to 40%
'There, that's a lot better… Now for the hard part'
Having direct access to the ship's Ficer network, he could naturally 'see' through its sensors and knew both Bob and Ellen had awoken and been brought up to speed by Victoria, and naturally they hadn't taken kindly to Mark's presence and commandeering of their ship
'Right, I didn't think I would need you so soon…'
Mark pulled the long sword out of his body as he moved though the crawlspace and after reading himself, he opened the hatch and called out
"Hi Bob, we kind of got off on the wrong foot"
Receiving no answer to his words Mark let out a sigh before he pulled himself up through the hatch as soon as he emerged, he blocked a metal slug with the flat side of his sword
"Come on now, Bobby boy, if I wanted to do you harm I already would have"
"Fuck you!"
Bob fired again, and Mark once again blocked the bullet that was aimed at his face, Mark let out an audible sigh as he twirled the sword around in the limited space, the sword twirled around the narrow corridor without hitting any of the surfaces
"Bobby, do you know why swords aren't used more in a zero gravity environment? It's mostly becau—"
Mark flicked the long sword around and deflected another bullet that buried itself into the side of the hallway
"... As I was saying, it's mostly because of manoeuvring, however if one can solve this by either a thruster pack of advanced vacuum suit, the effectiveness can be quite high"
As if demonstrating Mark suddenly floated forwards and instantly closed the distance between him and Bob as he pressed the blade against his neck
"Now, if you would please stop sh—"
Before Mark finished speaking Bob pulled the trigger again, sending a bullet into Mark's chest, which, needless to say, didn't have Bob's intended desire of killing the uninvited guest on his ship
"Are you done?"
Bob stared dumbfounded at the hole in Mark's chest that quickly closed, coming face to face with this inhumanity, it finally settled in his mind that he was powerless against Mark so he quickly adapted and asked
"...What even are you?"
Mark showed a smile before he reached into the wound on his chest and pulled out the mangled metal slug before he answered
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, nevermind that I believe our acquaintance can be quite profitable, even if it's quite short"
Bob pushed off the edge of the hatch and floated back towards the pilot's seat where he sat down, Victoria stood on the right side of the hatch with Ellen hiding behind her
'... So we got a male pilot in his early 30's shot black hair and general manicured appearance that suggest a military background, a female doctor that has yet to fully adopt to a zero g environment with long blonde hair and somewhat laxing muscle density, then there's the female engineer that clearly fully void adjusted with short purple hair'
"What sort of profit are you talking about?"
Mark's confident smile remained on his face before he turned his head to look at Ellen before he asked her
"Ellen, could you run a shipwide diagnostic on your console for the Ficer maintenance status?"
Ellen didn't responded and hid further behind Victoria that continued staring mistrusting at Mark, however she still did as he asked and ran the diagnostic, a few moments later she spoke, sounding more than a little surprised
"T-The report shows significant improvements in all shipwide systems"
Bob glanced down at his wrist mounted console and pulled up the report to check for himself, after about half a minute of silence Mark asked
"How much would you reckon that would have cost at a specialized repair facility? A few hundred thousand credits?"
Bob nodded as he continued looking though the report and added
"Yeah, there about… How did… No nevermind"
Mark raised his long sword and rested it on his shoulder before he continued
"Now, that was only the most basic maintenance, give me another few days and you'll properly be able to trade this ship for a significantly larger one or outright sell it for a significant profit over the original purchase price"
Bob tired his best to remain calm, however Mark could see his offer was highly attractive, it wasn't him that asked the obvious, but instead it was Victoria
"So, what do you want Mark?"
Mark answered simply
"Transport to a mid-to-low security rated station"
Victoria narrowed her eyes slightly and asked
"Really, is that all?"
"Yeah, maybe some conversation too… It's been a while since I've been among the stars, so I would like to catch up on some things"
While the 3 mortals saw this as confirmation that Mark had been imprisoned for a long time, he was more so speaking about his journey in another reality and the things he had grown used to there. At these 2 simple requests, Bob agreed to Mark's deal
"Alright, however I'll need you to release the restrictions you placed on the drives and FTL"
"Sure thing Bobby boy"
"...Don't call me that"
And so with a simple deal set up Mark began fixing up the ship's Ficer crystal with Bob and Ellen making other general maintenance to take full advantage of the restored system functions, then needless to say Victoria as the one with the least experience in general ship maintenance, helped out Mark with the whole conversation part of the deal, much to her growing annoyance
"So there's really no lucky guy or gal that's waiting for this young doctor back home?"
"For the final time, I don't see how the fuck that's any of your buisness"
Mark shrugged before he instantly changed topic
"So, tell me about the guild, is it still open for anyone that can fly a ship?"
"The guild? Which one?"
"The mercenary guild"
"...I'll ask again, which one are you asking about?"
Mark let out a sigh before he responded
"Never mind, that tells me all that I need to know about that… Still I would have figured a young, highly educated woman or man for that matter, would be a hot commodity. I guess things really have gone to shit"
Realizing Mark's curiosity of her dating life wasn't entirely harassment Victoria cautiously asked
"...How did you draw that conclusion?"
Mark showed a smile as he asked
"How long did you say you studied for again?"
"6 years for the a biochemical doctor degree, combined with the generalized education, 12 years"
"Right, so around half of your life you've spent on education… Now you don't seem like a gambler and you are far too healthy to be an addict so I am guessing some sort of family emergency?"
"Fuck you"
Mark shrugged off the insult and continued
"Anyhow the fact that a highly specialised doctor have resorted to flying with 2 mediocre mercenaries in a barely space-worthy ship to harvest organic data from frozen corpses instead of borrowing money from a respectable institution, significant other or in-law relative really paints a picture of the current economic situation"
Victoria gazed at Mark for a bit, he could feel her unease with him building
"Well… Things certainly have been better"
'Looks like I hit the nail on the head… Well, civil unrest and/or economic uncertainty will help me blend in easier, so I guess it isn't all bad'