Ace began to navigate the halls of the Bloody Mary, it was a nice ship, it was clean, its air was clear, and its crew were disciplined from what Ace had seen, every time he passed one they said hello or tipped there cap, to which he either replied with a 'hi' or tipping his own imaginary cap.

He was heading towards the bridge (while seeing some very odd sights to him, including more then a couple Non humans) to see if he could introduce himself to some of the bridge crew.

Paris had lectured him several times about how its good to have friends in important places, places that will help you come out on top, and (unfortunately) she was right, knowing dune personally had allowed Ace to talk to him and see what was happening without it seeming suspicious, perhaps the same would happen here.

As Ace walked the phaliq floors, he passed a open door, not looking inside, and felt a wave of heat even through his armor, though it quickly cooled him down.

He backpedaled slightly and looked inside the room, it had a spooky glow to it, as if there was a fire, and there was a girl with fuzzy puffed up hair and working goggles, sitting on a chair, reading a book while chomping on a potato sliver, a bag that Ace assumed were full of them. "

"Umm, hi?" said Ace curiously, why was she sitting in a near burning room without any armor on that could cool her down.

The girls head snapped up and she quickly put the sliver back in her bag before grinning at him and asking "let me guess, too hot?"

"Its... noticeable." said Ace after a moment of thought.

"Yeah, everyone complains, but its not my fault I enjoy the heat."

"How are you not dying right now from the heat? you don't even have armor on."

"Oh this heat? this is nothing, ive experienced much worse I grew up on a planet close to the sun see and the icicle around my town was on the fritz often."

Ace winced, Venus had a planetary dome meaning they were completely protected from things outside, so could only imagine how hot it must have been.

Instead of saying this he answered "so I guess everyone else is a wimp."

This made the lady laugh "yeah, I guess that's true."

"So, what are you doing?" asked Ace, leaning in and looking around, noticing four torpedo ports and more then dozen stacked torpedo's, along with a moving mech.

"Oh, I operate torpedo station two, im in charge of making sure the torpedo's are ready to be fired and fixing any broken torpedo's"

"Isnt fixing torpedo's dangerous?" torpedo's were basically super missiles, big, deadly, armored, and could track you. not something you want to be fixing.

"Yeah but some of us dying from this thing exploding is better then all of us dying from a terrorist ship."

Ace nodded, if a torpedo exploded there was a decent chance that the explosion would be reasonably contained and the ship could be salvaged and a part of the crew survive, instead of the ship being stolen and the crew executed at gun point.

"So, whats your name?"

"Ace Newblood"

"Merald Tin, nice to meet you Ace" she held out a hand for him to shake.

Ace took it and gave it a firm shake "same here."

"Well, im going to finish my snack, you'd best leave before your fans drain to much of your power."

"How did you know-"

"When you passed, I heard your fans turn on, and you were way to comfortable in this sort of heat despite all the questions."

Ace blinked, surprised that she had actually heard his fans, his armor was semi soundproof and the only reason his voice wasn't a muffled sound was because of his speaker, she had good hearing, maybe you didn't need to be in the middle of everything to notice things.

"well bye" said Ace as he began to leave.

"Bye" replied Merald, closing the door behind him.

Ace sighed as his fans turned off and he was put back into room temperature.

"Nice chat" said a deckman as he passed by.

For a second Ace thought the person was going to talk to him again (despite the fact that Ace had just finished talking and had to reload on conversational words) but he instead just passed by as if he had only said hello.

Ace shrugged, not taking much notice of it after that, and continued along his way to the bridge.

He observed the halls, taking notice of everything he could, he had been on vessels before, but they were all frigates and one time a battleship, not a mark 2 dreadnaught, one of the points on pangeas very deadly, very point trident, most people would have said 'spear' but a spear traditionally had only one point so, not a good metaphor once you thought about it.

After about a minute of walking the halls of the ship he came to one of the doors to the bridge, where two navy troopers were guarding it on each side, holding very menacing looking semi auto rifles.

Ace waved at them. they didn't wave back, which wasn't to surprising now that Ace thought about it.

As he got closer the door slid open and Ace glanced at the trooper on the left, wondering if they would stop him, they shouldn't have been able to tell because one of the best part of a visor was that you could look at something, and no one would know unless you turned your head.

They didn't.

As Ace entered the bridge the door slid closed behind him and he had a full view of the accelerated space outside the bloody Mary, which confirmed that they had indeed entered matrix jump and were now flying faster then light.

Matrix jump was one of the three methods for interstellar travel, the most common and easiest, but also the slowest.

Originally a magnetic drive wasn't used on a ship, it was used on site by a station or a planet or something just like a blink.alt or blink gate, it basically just coil gunned them someplace at speeds that, though not quite the speed of light, was still pretty fast.

At least that was the way it worked Millenia ago. now a days humanity was too spread apart for that to even be considered a outdated way of doing it, now things were a bit more complicated then that.

Now the ships matrix drives didn't propel the ship, instead the matrix drives would drag part of a dimension from a different dimension and shield a ship with that, although people could still see the ship it was no covered in a different dimension.

Now the matrix drive would open a portal to the same dimension and drag the ship towards the portal, although drag makes it sound like its slow, it was actually faster then light by a bit. and the way you stopped was by once you were close to where you wanted to be you released the molecules which fled to the portal then closed the portal.

The problem was, say there was another person jumping and there portal was closer to you then your own portal, what was keeping you from going towards the other persons portal.

Answer, you energized the portal and your own molecules to a specific... Ace called it tune and that would make it so that your ships molecules wanted to go towards the portal you made much more then to someone else's portal.

There were billions of codes that you could tune it to so there wasn't much to worry about

"Hello Ace"

Ace glanced next to him, then looked up a couple of stairs to see Chronos sitting on a captains chair, eating something from a silver metal platter that Ace couldn't see.

"Captain" replied Ace, nodding.

"So I assume that you've introduced your self to the rest of your squad." it wasn't a question.

Ace nodded anyway, it was always polite to answer even if it wasn't a question.

"How are you getting along with them?"

"The experience has been... interesting, to say the least." Ace decided not to tell her about how Elizabeth was being insubordinate.

"That bad?" asked the admiral, she picked up one of the things from the platter and Ace saw that it was a red wasp, roasted to the point where it had just began to burn and Ace began to feel a tiny bit hungry.

The admiral noticed him staring at her and said to him "here" before tossing it at him.

Ace's quick reflexes plucked it from the air and at first he wanted to bite into it immediately, but decided to instead offer to give it back.

"You can keep it" said Ace.

"Keep it, if you don't eat it i'll throw it away."

Ace shrugged and neatly chomped down into It, biting off its head, crunched the beheaded insect beneath his teeth, the crunchy carapace giving way to a fleshier and more tender inside. and considering that it wasn't dull, was probably seasoned by spicy spices.

Ace enjoyed it.

After finishing off the insect which had been bigger then his thumb by a bit, Chronos said absent mindedly "considering your not panting I guess you are used to spice. unlike most of my crew."

Ace had grown up on Venus, center of trade in the mother district and nearly the center of all trade, and also one of the highest populated. so he had been exposed to many dishes, including ones which were extremely spicy, salty, sweet, or savory. all of whom Ace had gotten so used to that now they were simply mildly so to him.

"Yeah, I grew up on Venus" replied Ace, wondering if that would explain enough to avoid more questions.

Luckily it did because the admiral simply nodded in response to his answer.

Ace turned his view back to outside the window, watching as extremely distant stars turned into streaks of light against the darkness as they traveled through space at speeds faster then light.

"So, which city did you grow up in?" asked the admiral absent mindedly.

"Autumn, its a nice place." replied Ace, shrugging, Autumn city was both upper class and a crime den, considering how big the city was and how much suspicious stuff went on, it was easy for a criminal to get lost there despite it being one of the centers of the human empires.

"So I've heard" replied Chronos thoughtfully "also a crime den."

"Where are you from?" asked Ace, a little bit insulted that the first thing she said about his home was the fact that is was a crime den.

"Station talon, hoover district"

"You lived, aboard a station?"

"Yes, why?"

"That just seems..... sad. growing up surrounded by only metal and other people"

"We had a garden. a big one at that, and a small farm, it wasn't pretty but it worked."

Ace got a sense of hostility from that last sentence and decided to take a step back from the subject, not wanting to annoy the person who was in command of the ship he was aboard. and the person who knew his record.

"This is a nice ship" said Ace, returning his attention to outside the window.

"Isnt it" replied the admiral, eating another wasp.

"When did you get it?" Asked Ace, Chronos was a beta admiral, dreadnaughts were only for omega, beta, and alpha admirals, and it took about four years for someone to rank up in the navy, if they were very competent, maybe take a year off of that.

"Two years ago, before then it was operated by a alpha admiral before he ranked up and was put in charge of a cruiser, so they handed it over to me."

Ace nodded, once a alpha admiral ranked up to rear admiral, lower class, they were put in charge of a cruiser or, mark three dreadnaught, or a light carrier or something. directly under a vice admiral, much like the captains of the frigates were for Chronos. and she must have had five other ships spread around space just not directly under her

"The crew is good, not the best, but good."

At this Ace glanced at the Deckmen, weapons officers, navigation officers, transmissions scanners, and several more positions that were crucial to keep the ship functioning without a AI.

"Why don't you have a AI?" asked Ace, AI's were common place, though humans, androids, even Pangean Alien citizens outnumbered them drastically, but they outnumbered the amount of warships by quite a bit, although if you combined them with civilian ships then the ships outnumbered them as well.

AI rights dictated that AI's be given the option of working aboard a ship, and considering that ships were some of the most complex things out there and one of the few things that could keep there rapidly growing intelligence mostly occupied, many chose to work aboard a warship, sure there were some who lived in the cloud but they were few and mostly AI's who had to be rebooted, or fixed or retired.

The admiral shrugged "I just havent had the opportunity to request one for as long as ive been aboard."

"Two years aboard this ship and you haven't had a chance yet?"

"More higher ups want two AI's so that there ships will run better. even a AI can only do so much."

Ace scowled, two AI's when they didn't even need one, it was a waste of resources and Ace bet that most of them didn't even have a important ship like a heavy cruiser, or a carrier which it was suggested that you do have two AI's for since those ships were so complicated that there bridge crews often came in at three and a half times bigger.

"Its a waste of AI's" muttered Ace.

"We're detecting a open portal nearby." said a deckman "no Pangean ships should be here."

"Tell the risen prophecy to intercept it and arm its cannon to eighty percent power"

"Oh great, we're about to point a armed oversized railgun at them, that wont be threatening in the slightest." muttered Ace sarcastically, arming a cannon seemed excessive to him

"First of all its a oversized coil gun" started Chronos " second of all. there stopping in the middle of nowhere, we're no where near a trading route and there are no stations for thousands of miles. what's the point in taking risk"

Ace shrugged, Chronos was right, no point in taking risk. "if you say so."

Chronos looked down at him for a second before nodding and returning her view to outside the window"You should probably head to the mess room, dinner is about to be served and if you want to beat the naval personnel and your fellow Demeter members you should probably head there right away."

"What about you and the deck officers?"

"We get food delivered through a conveyer to us."

"Aah" exclaimed Ace, nodding slightly, more luxury tech "thanks for the tip" and he began to walk back down the corridor.

He had hoped to follow a group of people to the mess but apparently nobody from near the front of the ship needed/wanted to eat, or had there food delivered to them, through another small conveyer.

So instead, he had to whisper to his helmet to pull up a map of the bloody mary and it quickly gave him a map on the bottom left corner of his visor, including a 'you are here' red dot.

Ace loved technology.