Chancer V


 * Gavin Dunn: "Everybody thinks the only way to survive out here's by being strong. You know how a fool like me has made it this long?"
 * Zoey Hunsinger: "Not really, no."
 * Gavin Dunn: "Trust. The Chancer trusts me to take care of her, and if I've done my job, I know I can trust her."
 * —Gavin Dunn and Zoey Hunsinger.

The Chancer V was a highly modified Argo-class transport starship with a storied history that stretched to just over half a decade before the start of the. Manufactured by Rhodes Collosi Shipwrights on, the Chancer traded hands countless times before eventually arriving in the hands of the insurrectionist-turned-smuggler Gavin Dunn. Dunn eventually hired on a traitor Spartan, a failed ship thief and later a Sangheili gladiator, and the unlikely crew formed a makeshift family aboard the battered freighter. The Chancer’s crew scraped out a living on the fringes of the post-war galaxy, more often than not straying onto the wrong side of the law. Crossing paths with Spartans, revolutionaries, crime bosses, and warlords, the Chancer and its crew would play a pivotal role in many galaxy-shaping events.

Construction and Early History
"She and her sisters are a relic of a bygone age. There used to be a time when you couldn't even look skyward on an outer colony without seeing one of these things lifting off or touching down."

- Tom Spender referring to the Argo-class.

The year 2519 signaled the end of an era, as Rhodes Collosi announced that it would cease its production on the Series- Argo-class light freighter, last of a dynasty which had played a pivotal role in settling the as the first -capable vessel available on the civilian market. When the last batch rolled off of the assembly lines in New Richmond, the colonial capital of Skopje, in November of that year, a small celebration was held for the shipyard's workers, executives, and a number of minor government officials whom attended. The last freighter of her kind to ever be assembled was specially purchased by the planet's governor and donated to the Skopje Historical Society to serve as a museum display, open to the public until in 2547 when the planet was glassed. No one, however, would pay attention to the ship just four units ahead of the last, serial number RCS-SK-519/000A823543, a vessel destined to outlast and outdo any of its sister-ships. Spending a week in drydock before she was purchased, the ship would be christened the Karen J. after its owner's wife and become the workhorse of a one-horse construction company on, where it was given its black, white, and orange paint scheme. For fifteen years, the Karen J. served as the company's heavy lifter and the owner's personal vehicle, enduring work no more extreme than ferrying building supplies to sites across the flourishing Outer Colony and making the occasional slipspace jump to neighboring systems to pick up materials unavailable on Jericho.

When Jericho VII was by the  in 2535, the vessel would be responsible for the evacuation of 47 civilians, including the owner and his family, when it slipped past the alien fleet to make a randomized slipspace jump and eventually end up on. Though the it had saved his life, as the owner found himself among the growing number of refugees gathering in the core worlds, he would be forced to sell the ship to keep his family fed and clothed, passing it into the hands of a member of the criminal cartel known as the Syndicate. In service of the young criminal lieutenant's branch operation, the ship would be extensively reworked to accommodate a myriad concealed smuggling compartments and fly under a half-dozen faked registrations and names, including Ace of Trades, Nylund's Hat-Trick, and Turul, to carry slapsticks and numerous other illegal substances through the security nets of intercolonial law enforcement. The ship developed a reputation for being reliable in its deliveries, sneaking under the noses of ever-sparser colonial garrisons with ease and often completing slipspace jumps well ahead of schedule, enough so that her various crews began remarking that the ship's sponsor must have been Saint Elisa herself.

Eventually, its luck caught the eye of a rising Syndicate underboss by the nickname of "Gleaner", who appropriated the vessel for his own use. On his authority, the ship was refitted with a pair of powerful R171 Bucephalis thrusters, two retractable, and an  Variable-Munitions Launcher Tube in addition to shoring up key points in the vessel's frame, making it more formidable without sacrificing the advantage of speed from a ship its size. Renamed the Starlight, Gleaner used the ship for tasks of high importance and payoff, such as looting priceless cultural artifacts from colonies under active attack by the Covenant or a courier for Syndicate-bought government officials. Soon, the freighter's operations were based on Iskandar, where the Syndicate was headquartered, where it was at the call of their most powerful members as Gleaner continued moving up in the organization. This very promotion, however, would become its downfall, as the fickle elite demanded newer, sleeker ships to suit their expensive tastes, passing over the outdated freighter beginning to show its age. Though Gleaner continued to see the Starlight as a more-than-capable asset, when some of its parts were cannibalized in 2548 to repair Captain Tom Spender's Argo-class freighter Chancer, he retired it from service to his organization, keeping the vessel on Iskandar to handle odd jobs.

At last, in 2551, the vessel was sold when an anonymous client came to the Syndicate in need of a shuttle for a one-way slipspace journey. Still possessing its translight drive, the Starlight was fitted with enough replacement parts to make her spaceworthy again and exchanged to the client for untraceable cash-credit notes. Its buyer was, the spiritual guru who had founded the , who had recently disappeared from the public eye in order to retire and lead his followers to believe he had attained some form of spiritual transcendence. Making what was believed to be its final jump, the freighter landed on, a colony well-suited to human habitation, but populated by less than a thousand people, kept secret by an entrepreneurial company as a vacation resort catering to the exorbitantly wealthy. There, an opulent country villa awaited Gevadim, while the Starlight was deemed not worth the cost of fueling up again to take out and resell. Instead, the vessel was parked in a secluded wood-built hangar several miles from the nearest human inhabitants and locked away. When the planet was discovered by a ship fleeing the  and its sparse human population rounded up, the Starlight’s hangar was overlooked by the aliens and forgotten altogether, left to rust for the next seven years.

Under New Management
While the Starlight’s shelter was overcome by moss, vines, and rot in the planet's temperate climate, galaxy-shaping events took place elsewhere. Following the and a truce between the UNSC and Sangheili in early 2553, humanity began looking to re-expand and recolonize worlds that had been lost in the war. Because it had never been and was in the same system as the symbolic military stronghold that had been, Beta Gabriel was one of the first planets considered for major reclamation efforts. Although politicians would squabble for years over whether to settle it as a population center for the billions of refugees clustered on Earth or terraform it as a desperately-needed agricultural world, the first new colonists arrived as soon as 2554. Among these were an ex-Marine named Moses Wheatley and his new-found family, having met his wife, Serina, by saving her life during the Battle of Earth and left the service to settle down with her and her children and grandchildren. While Moses found work as an engineer with a Beta Gabriel-based company surveying Reach for recolonization, his two stepsons registered claim to a large plot of land around their remote homestead for farming, on which happened to be hidden the old barn. When the barn and freighter were uncovered as the land was cleared, the family briefly discussed fixing up the ship for sale or having it hauled away, but had neither the time nor money to spend on it. Ultimately, the vessel continued to be left alone, apart from the family's grandchildren, who used the barn and the ship as a playground.

Only the chance arrival of an off-worlder would change the vessel's fortunes. In 2558, a spacer and former Insurrectionist named Gavin Dunn, already considered a public enemy by the UNSC for his part in leading the Second Insurrection of, was on the run after taking part in an ill-fated rescue mission to free a young Spartan from the custody of , which devolved into a tragic attack on a major Earth city. The event had placed Gavin at the top of United Earth Government and UNSC Most Wanted lists, second only to the rogue Spartan who'd planned the raid and his former comrade from Mamore, Simon-G294. After parting ways with the raid's other survivors on the independent colony of, Gavin took his CH-14 Cargo Hauler, the Chancer IV, and began planet-hopping, accepting jobs that entailed risky slipspace jumps between distant planets regularly in the belief that moving between star systems would make him harder to track. While this was true for official channels, the hefty bounty offered for Gavin's capture attracted those who worked in unofficial channels, including the greatest bounty hunter of the time: David Kahn.

When Kahn tracked Gavin down on the nearby world of, he took the precaution of sabotaging the Chancer IV to ensure the smuggler didn't escape, knowing from the failure of other bounty hunters before that Gavin was a more difficult mark than he appeared. He underestimated Gavin nonetheless, however, not counting on Gavin's skill to repair his ship being as good as his ability to fly it, and a chase ensued. Though Gavin was the better pilot, Kahn's ship was faster than the smuggler and his relentless assault prevented his target from having time to plot a slipspace jump. Outgunned and without a means of evading his attacker in open space, Gavin saw his only chance was to outmaneuver the bounty hunter by dropping into Beta Gabriel's atmosphere. The trick might have worked, if the old Cargo Hauler's aileron hydraulics hadn't failed in the intense heat of reentry. A burst of fire from Kahn's ship finished the job, and Gavin was forced to ride out the vessel's death throes in a barely-controlled crash landing as he was shot down. Though he survived the impact, Gavin knew the bounty hunter would be coming for him soon, and grabbing what few supplies he could carry, set out into the planet's wilderness. Though the smuggler had learned how to evade military patrols on Mamore, Kahn was a master tracker and quickly caught up with him. Dunn would have been captured were it not for the arrival of Moses Wheatley, who'd come to investigate the crash and whom Kahn warned to step aside, and then a Spartan suited in full Mark V MJOLNIR armor: Vinh-030. Confronted with such an unexpected and capable opponent which he was unprepared for, Kahn backed down, leaving the smuggler in their hands.

While at first intimidated by the legendary UNSC soldier, Gavin quickly learned their confrontation had been a bluff; Vinh had retired and been welcomed into her old friend's household after losing her eyesight to an energy sword wound in battle, the scar obscured by the outdated armor she'd illicitly for emergencies such as rescuing an injured spacer from the wreck of his ship. Returning with them to Wheatley's homestead, Gavin was treated as a guest, given a hot meal and a room to stay overnight, Moses going so far as to drive Gavin out the following day to the crash site, where they found to Gavin's disappointment that the wreck was unsalvageable. What troubled him more, however, was Gavin's rising feelings of guilt for not revealing to them who he was, when they were potentially putting themselves at risk by sheltering him. Privately, he confided to Vinh and Moses who he was, and though Vinh nearly attacked him at first, she grudgingly stood down after Gavin explained what the intended goal of the Philadelphia raid had been and that the crew had neither planned nor known how the bombardment from the UNSC Sogdia which devastated the city occurred. After their conversation, Gavin realized that even if he ran, he would be hunted relentlessly for the rest of his life unless he found some way of clearing his name, which he had no chance of doing on Beta Gabriel. To that end, the following morning, Gavin was led by Wheatley, Vinh, and the family's eldest grandchild, Aisha, to the barn where the Starlight sat.

Gavin fell in love with the ship immediately, and set to work assessing it for repairs that very day. Though it had hundreds of problems in need of fixing, each one more critical than the last, Gavin's teenage years had been spent growing up aboard a ship of the same class, and with scrap hauled from the wreck of the Chancer IV, he dove headfirst into its restoration. Many long days and sleepless nights followed, sometimes with an audience of the farm children or neighbors who came by to confirm the rumor of a starship being rebuilt, others with assistance from Vinh or Moses, both of whom had been instructed by the military in engineering. The only breaks he took were to eat, sleep, and carry out whatever odd jobs his hosts asked of him as the least he could do to earn his keep. Within a month, the ship was comfortable enough that Gavin was able to move into his cabin aboard it, and in two, though it nearly broke through the deteriorating hangar's wall, he'd made his first successful test of its thrusters. At last, in late March by the military calendar and just as Beta Gabriel's summer was coming to an end, Gavin declared the freighter's reconstruction complete, and renamed the ship, as he had with three previous vessels, after the first he'd ever crewed, also an Argo-class; and so it was that it became the Chancer V.

The Hijacking
In late 2559, Gavin was still trying to eke out a living on the colonial frontier. Now determined to remain independent of the Syndicate and its criminal network, he risked the underworld empire's wrath by evading the various "protection fees" imposed by its local agents and taking jobs from clients on the Syndicate's blacklist. Gavin's friends within the Syndicate such as Judith Ives and his handful of endearing encounters with the Syndicate's young but ruthless leader Helen Powell allowed him to get away with far more offenses than most spacers, but Helen knew that she would eventually have to make an example of him in order to keep other potential freelancers in line. She personally placed a modest bounty on Gavin's head, directing the Syndicate's expansive network of privateers and freelance mercenaries to capture him alive for delivery to the Syndicate leadership. At first Gavin was wily enough to evade the string of bounty hunters without losing out on his smuggling business. But the consequences of the Syndicate's bounty finally came back to him when a figure from his past picked up the contract.

While fighting for the Insurrection during Mamore's secession attempt, Gavin had fought alongside a turncoat named Simon-G294. After abandoning the Insurrectionist cause and being declared a Class A war criminal following their disastrous raid on Earth, the traitor Spartan fled UEG space and became a mercenary on the frontier. Under the alias of "Stray," Simon set his sights on his former comrade and began hounding Gavin across the frontier. Despite Stray's skills as a hunter and aid from his partner, the cunning smart A.I. Diana, Gavin managed to escape the capture attempts, outfoxing and humiliating the young mercenary on several occasions. But Stray came closer and closer with each successive ambush and his relentless pursuit began to kill Gavin's chances at picking up new contracts. Dangerously short on funds and unable to maintain the Chancer on his own, Gavin flew the ship to the independent colony of in order to seek out Judith Ives and negotiate with the Syndicate through her. Judith promised her old friend to do what she could to placate her criminal superiors; in the meantime, she asked Gavin to provide off-world passage for her protege, a young orphan named Zoey Hunsinger. Gavin took an instant liking to the girl and brought her aboard the Chancer. Unfortunately, the ship had picked up another passenger while Gavin was away. The smuggler realized too late that Stray had followed him to Talitsa and stowed away aboard the Chancer; with nowhere left to run Gavin surrendered at gunpoint and found himself a prisoner aboard his own ship.

Stray had Gavin take the ship to Famul, a pirate haven where he had arranged to hand Gavin over to the Syndicate. Gavin was surprised to learn that Stray and Zoey already knew each other; the mercenary had saved Zoey from Syndicate thugs who killed her parents when he himself had been on the criminal empire's blacklist. In orbit above Famul, Stray escorted Gavin off of the Chancer in order to hand him over to Syndicate agents. With the captain and his mercenary captor gone, Zoey put a plan of her own into motion by bypassing the ship's rudimentary security systems and instructing the autopilot function to fly it to Famul's surface. The young thief's plan was to make her fortune by selling the ship to the highest bidder and quickly put out feelers to entice potential buyers. The black market advertisement was quickly picked up by members of the Humanity Liberation Front rebel group on the lookout for ships to use for their operations. Zoey arranged to make the deal at one of the pirate world's shipyards but got more than she bargained for when she came face to face with the HLF's formidable commander, Redmond Venter. The meeting was cut short when Stray and Gavin―having reluctantly put aside their differences to take on their mutual enemy, Venter―ambushed the HLF party. In the ensuing firefight, Venter took Gavin hostage and flew the Chancer back up into orbit. Ordered by the Syndicate to hand Gavin over alive, Venter arrived back on Famul's main orbital station only for the system to erupt in an unanticipated civil war, unintentionally caused by Gavin and Simon taking out a Jiralhanae crime lord and upsetting Famul's balance of power which allowed the forces of Shinsu 'Refum to take over. With violence breaking out in space and on the surface, Venter was forced to rely on Gavin to pilot the Chancer through the fighting as he rallied his HLF contingent. Their reluctant truce was shattered as the Chancer was once again ambushed, this time by Stray and Zoey. While Stray fought his former mentor, Gavin and Zoey cooperated to repair damages to the Chancer's internal systems. Zoey impressed Gavin with her knack for shipwork; for his part, the smuggler interrupted Stray's losing battle with Venter, forcing the rebel commander into an escape pod and ejecting him from the ship.

The grounded Chancer was beset by battle-crazed Jiralhanae. Despite his past rivalry with Gavin, Stray held the pirates off while the ship was repaired. The mercenary was heavily wounded during the fierce fighting but managed to escape aboard the Chancer when Gavin and Zoey refused to leave him behind. The smuggling ship fled the system as the violence continued unabated. With the ship in desperate need of repairs, Gavin offered Zoey a place in his crew. Despite the girl's hijacking attempt, he realized her potential for work aboard a ship and saw more in her than just another would-be thief. Realizing just how far she had left to go in life, Zoey quickly took him up on his offer. Stray, who had betrayed his Syndicate employers by attacking Venter and saving Gavin, reluctantly agreed to stay on as well. The young mercenary believed that the Chancer would only be a temporary home as he lay low to avoid the criminal empire's wrath.

A Place to Call Home
Following the escape from Famul, Gavin brought the Chancer to the frontier colony of to repair the damage suffered during the fighting. In the respite that followed their close shave with death, the smuggler took his first tentative steps toward bonding with Zoey as he tried to scrape together the funds needed for the repairs. Blacklisted by the Syndicate and wary of any Colonial Authority contracts, Gavin instead found himself hired by an anonymous source that needed products transported without Syndicate interference. In desperate need of credits, Gavin agreed to the contract despite his wariness regarding unknown employers. In the meantime, Stray slipped away from the ship amidst a wave of second thoughts over his decision to stay with Gavin and Zoey. It wasn’t long before he found himself under attack by Ro'nin and Kenpachus, two mercenaries hunting after the Syndicate bounty on his head. Stray fled the scuffle and returned to the ship, which blasted off just ahead of the persistent duo. Remembering how difficult life on the Syndicate’s hit list was, Stray finally committed to remaining on the Chancer full time.

In the weeks and months that followed, the Chancer's new crew worked to stay below the grid, taking odd jobs only from contacts that Gavin and Stray trusted not to sell them out to the Syndicate. Even some of these choice employers proved treacherous, and the fight on Talitsa was only the first of many encounters with criminal enforcers. Both the smuggler and the mercenary were used to life as fugitives but Zoey had a more difficult time adjusting to the shipboard environment. Gavin did his best to ease the transition by beginning to teach her the fundamentals of running and managing a spacecraft. Suddenly finding himself the most capable fighter aboard a ship with a price on its hull, Stray set about looking for ways to improve their precarious position while also looking for opportunities to strike rich and buy their way back into the Syndicate's good graces. To this end he re-established contact with Diana, a renegade artificial intelligence who had served as his partner in crime ever since his desertion. Though Diana's capabilities were indeed formidable, Gavin deeply mistrusted the cunning AI and severely limited her access to the ship's systems. Though Stray felt that cooperating with Diana was the best way to stay ahead of the Syndicate he grudgingly deferred to Gavin's leadership. It would not be the the last time Gavin and Stray clashed over shipboard policy. Stray also troubled Gavin by resuming the combat training he had begun with Zoey back when she was his ward on Venezia. Though the captain could not object to teaching the girl self-defense, he was haunted by memories of his role in the rebellion on Mamore and the child soldiers he had helped arm and send to their deaths.

The Chancer’s problems were compounded by several Insurrectionist factions' determination to execute Gavin as a traitor and capture Stray for use in a burgeoning special warfare project. Due to his familiarity with both marks, Redmond Venter was tasked with hunting down the Chancer. Hounded by both Venter's agents and the Syndicate's enforcers, the Chancer skirted the fringes of civilized space but also found itself pursued by agents of the UNSC's who aimed to eliminate Stray as a traitor Spartan. The Chancer’s increasingly desperate crew found themselves escaping their pursuers by narrower and narrower margins until Gavin caved in to Stray's advice and accepted Diana's help. The rogue AI used her connections with an enigmatic organization to bring the crew into contact with Helen Powell, the fearsome leader at the heart of the Syndicate's criminal network. In exchange for an end to the bounty on their heads, Gavin and Stray agreed to undertake a dangerous mission to steal artifacts from a UNSC outpost on. Unbeknownst to them, the Chancer was tasked by Venter's rebel task force. Upon learning of the ship's mission, Venter's superiors promptly ordered a full-scale assault on Erebus in an effort to steal the artifacts for the Insurrection. The crew's mission was further jeopardized when a Spartan Headhunter team abducted Zoey in an attempt to lure Stray into an ambush. As the Insurrectionist attack brought the Erebus facility to full alert, Gavin headed off Venter's strike team while Stray fought a pitched battle with his former comrades. Zoey escaped in the confusion and used the chaos of the fighting to single-handedly steal the artifacts and deliver them to the Chancer. Cornered by Venter, Gavin was moments away from losing his life to his former friend when UNSC reinforcements arrived to overwhelm the Insurrectionist forces. Venter abandoned his pursuit of Gavin in order to assume command of the survivors and prevent the rebel defeat from turning into an out-and out massacre, allowing the Chancer's captain to rejoin Zoey aboard the ship. They returned to pick up Stray and were shocked at the brutality with which he dispatched his fellow Spartans. With the battle over, the Chancer was very nearly captured by the. Gavin won them safe passage through his rapport with one of the naval commanders and the Chancer was allowed to slip away with the stolen artifacts hidden inside its cargo bay.

"Frontier's crawling with pirates, Covie remnant, and worse. But on the plus side, there will definitely be less people trying to actively kill us. Which will make earning an honest living that much easier."

- Gavin Dunn

With the debt to the Syndicate paid, the Chancer was once again able to choose jobs from a broader pool of potential employers. But fearing further UNSC entanglements, the crew agreed to abandon human-controlled space entirely. Charting a course for the chaotic border between humanity's colonies and those of the former Covenant client races, Gavin, Stray, and Zoey looked forward to finding new opportunities to strike it rich on the galactic frontier.

Layout
The Argo-class' internal setup is defined by two overlapping levels, with the forward mid-level counting towards the upper deck as it incorporates the passenger-devoted galley, while the lower deck consists of the engine room and cargo bay where crew would normally work.

Cabin
Set in the Chancer’s bow is the nerve center of every ship: its cab. At a cramped three meters wide by two and a half long, the cabin incorporates a pilot's and copilot's station side by side with just enough room for one or two other occupants to stand behind them. Both stations are surrounded by wraparound banks of control consoles, which Gavin tries to keep clean, and furbished with crash-harnessed seats facing forward unto a wide, segmented porthole that affords crew members with a nearly one-hundred and eighty degree field of vision. All of the ship's functions can be controlled from either station, though the freighter's and a series of star charts are hung on the port wall beside the pilot's station while the COMs panel sits next to the copilot starboard.

Most of the internal systems, like the NAV computer, were designed by, but have seen significant modification on the part of Gavin, his human allies, and the artificial intelligences Diana and Juno. While biometric ignition keyed to members of the crew is a start, most prominent of these is a remote piloting function accessible by a backdoor, installed very early in Gavin's ownership of the vessel during one of his misadventures. Though it has been exploited by his enemies before, electronic countermeasures put in place by Juno have made this very difficult to do. These systems also control a pair of retractable hidden in hull compartments beneath the cabin. Years later, a rudimentary shielding system would also be installed on the ship by Captain Zoey Hunsinger.

Galley and Common Rooms
Located just aft of the cockpit cabin, the Chancer’s small galley serves as the crew's communal kitchen and dining room, just large enough to accommodate four or five people comfortably. The shipwrights of Rhodes Collosi designed it for efficiency, from the table and swivel-chairs bolted down to prevent them from being thrown around to the bank of longitudinal appliances along the starboard wall. These include a sink, refrigerator, microwave, and small stove for storing and preparing the ship's perpetually minimal supply of food. Dry goods as well as plates and silverware are stowed in overhead cupboards, compartmentalized to ensure a maximum use of space.

Connected to the galley by a steeply-pitched ship's ladder, the vessel's other common rooms occupy a space above the engine room. Separate compartments are set aside for a shower and bathroom, while most of this space was formerly used to provide for eight cryogenic beds to preserve a crew in cryostasis over long slipspace voyages. Shortly after acquiring the vessel, however, Gavin sold the cryo beds to help pay for the ship's restoration, and the relatively large room now functions as a makeshift rec room and meeting area for when room-to-room shouting or wireless communication just won't do. The lack of cryo pods also cuts down on the Chancer’s power consumption, allowing more of the engine's output to be devoted elsewhere.

Private Quarters
Although secondary to the role of cargo vessel, all Argo-class ships are equipped with personal quarters for members of the crew, and when running shorthanded as the Chancer often does, spare compartments can be used to accommodate passengers. The Chancer V incorporates eight dormitories in addition to the captain's cabin, located along the aft corridor above the cargo bay. Each measures around ten by ten feet, and include a modest bed, storage compartments, and a computer terminal for the occupant. The readiness of these quarters to receive guests, however, may vary, as Captain Dunn has been known to sell the spare bedding when particularly tight for credits.

The captain's cabin is double the size of the other accommodations, set in the very tail of the ship beneath a slanted roof, which bears several dents from the many times its resident has bumped his head getting up. The room includes a private bathroom and shower in addition to the bed, storage cabinets, and a desk. A large section of the back wall can be retracted to reveal an observation window for stargazing.

Engine Room
If the cabin is the Chancer’s brain, then the engine room most certainly comprises its heart. Between the galley and cargo bay and below the common rooms, the engine room contains the ship's powerplant,, and most of the Chancer’s life support systems. Originally, electrical power was supplied by an RCS-1 Generator developed in-house by Rhodes Collosi to cut costs from incorporating technology from other companies, but was considered underpowered and replaced by the Syndicate's first modification with an industrial-strength. This generator converts power from a number of available sources, including a dorsal solar panel array, air turbines in the wings, and even collected thermal energy built up during re-entries to power a tiny internal steam turbine, using water borrowed from the life support system. Energy is then stored in a network of batteries throughout the ship to provide each room with local power, and prevent catastrophic loss of power from excessive damage.

During its refit, the Chancer also received a pair of R171 Bucephalis Thrusters manufactured by, greatly increasing the ship's speed and hauling power. These engines are mounted on mechanical gimbals powered by the ship's main generator, but the thrusters themselves are fed by Traxus' standard, housed carefully within the reinforced hardpoints of the wings due to their instability. As the primary source of power to actually propel the ship, these cores need to be replaced several times a year, which can be potentially expensive based on supply and demand on whatever colony the crew happen to find themselves on. Independent of both of these power systems, however, is the Chancer’s true heart: her Model 2555 Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. Supplied by its own generator, the ship's current slipspace drive is the first of its kind, modified on commission by the Freelancers and given to Captain Dunn by Reginald Harding as a payment. The drive is known to be unpredictable, sometimes making journeys in the expected weeks while at others traversing major distances across the galaxy in a matter of days or hours, though seldom to the crew's advantage.

Life support is handled by a, a dated technology, but revolutionary in its time. Within the engine room is a central tank that contains layered beds of genetically-engineered algae, which perform the dual roles of producing oxygen through photosynthesis and recycling water. The organic recycling system produces noticeably fresher air inside the Chancer than on other modern starships, while a smaller auxiliary life support system uses a more typical recycling system and oxygen tanks. In the role of a water recycling system, the tank employs a greywater approach through which some water filtering back through the main tank, where the algae breaks down bacteria and purifies it for reuse. On a small ship, however, no system can be one hundred percent effective, and the unusable blackwater is dumped and has to be replaced later. This system poses a potential risk, as alien toxins could begin to kill off the bacteria colony, leaving the ship on auxiliary life support until the colony is able to be regrown.

Cargo Bay
By far the largest single space aboard, the cargo bay measures roughly ten meters tall by ten meters wide, and thirty deep, located aft below the crew compartments. Twin stairwells run on either wall leading up into the common rooms, each a meter wide, leaving an 8-meter wide cargo deck for the freighter to hold up to 2500 square meters, enough room for two UNSC tanks end-to-end. The deck is flanked by two raised platforms under the stairwells on either side, where a workbench and myriad chests of tools are stored starboard, and cargo bay door controls, a small medical supply, and the local intercom terminal port.

Beneath the bay's floor lies the majority of the ship's smuggling compartment space. Normally reserved for the majority of landing gear and bay door hydraulics, the Chancer V was modified to employ smaller alternative mechanics to leave room for one wide, though shallow, hidden compartment. Lined with layers of insulation that seal the space airtight and dampen the sound of hollow space beneath a metal deck, the section appears to scanning like merely another part of the ship's heat-retaining hull. Identifying the space from within the cargo bay is no less difficult; the floor panels over the compartment are genuinely bolted down, making it a pain to open and close each time, but creating a much more convincing facade. Only the best-trained eyes will notice the metal stripping around the bolts which give away that they've been frequently removed, hinting at what lies underneath. Though the largest individual compartment, dozens of smaller hideaways riddle the walls and floors of the ship, and even its owners might not be able to account for them all.

Crew
"This ship is a hell of a lot more than just her specs and the tech holding her together. Don't get me wrong, I'm plenty proud of all the cabling and mods and systems I've crammed into her old bulkheads. They're the muscle, the veins, the nervous system, the stuff that makes her tick. But the heart and soul, those'd be the people who've come together to live inside the old girl and keep her flying the space lanes."

- Gavin Dunn Gavin Dunn = "After Mamore, I didn't think I could ever do enough to make up for it. This ship gave me — gave us all — what we needed. A second chance."

- Gavin Dunn

From the days of his childhood, Gavin Dunn has always had a passion for flying. It led him once upon a time to stow away aboard the freighter, but after a tragic series of events on Skopje, Gavin was left a lost child amid thousands of refugees in the colony's streets. Escaping the life of a street thief when he stowed away again on Tom Spender's original Chancer, the boy was taken in and spent the teenage years of his life as a cabin boy, working his way up as he learned every job on a ship from veteran pilots and expert mechanics. When the original ship's crew were arrested by the UNSC after risking their lives in the evacuation of Sigma Octanus IV, Gavin alone escaped and resolved to fight for independence when the Great War ended, joining up with his childhood friend Redmond Venter to join the Insurrection on Mamore. There, he pushed for the use of child soldiers, convinced by a driven young girl named Emily and her friend Stray who wanted to fight for her home. When Redmond allowed Emily to carry out a suicide bombing, however, Gavin realized that he'd gone too far, and betrayed the Insurrection before fleeing the planet and eventually finding employment with the Syndicate as a smuggler, going through several ships before acquiring the Chancer V. After crossing paths with Stray several times, Gavin reached out to him and met Zoey Hunsinger in the process, offering them both a place to stay to help one another get by, and later brought on Tal 'Zerex after helping the Sangheili to the point where he was honor-bound to protect Gavin. Recognizing in each of them something better than they'd give themselves credit for, Gavin tried to bind the crew together through helping one another deal with painful pasts and present problems, eventually succeeding enough to make a future for them together as an unusual sort of family.

At first, the ship was a way for Gavin to escape the guilt he had felt over his part in the Insurrection, but when its crew began to form, the Chancer V came to mean much more. Driven by an abiding desire to make up for his past, Gavin feels responsible for protecting anyone aboard his ship, and that goes doubly for anyone he counts as a member of his crew. Unfortunately, circumstances often beyond his control seem to naturally find trouble for the lot of them, and when it comes down to a fight, Gavin can be deceptively unassuming the moment before an unsecured cargo container or well-aimed escape pod crushes you flat. Though his strategies are often improvised in a bar fight brawling fashion, the number of times he's had to contend with opponents as powerful as Sangheili or even Spartans suggest there's more to do with it than luck. Despite this apparent skill in fighting and the obvious skill of his crew, Gavin refuses to put that strength to use preying on those weaker than themselves, although he hasn't shied away from picking a fight from those stronger than his little band who do. Rather than survive on using their strength, Gavin gets by on what he considers honest work, even if the job's legality is far below his appraisal of its morality. Zoey Hunsinger = "I'm grateful for the parents I had and the life they tried to give me. But the Chancer is my home now, and I'll do whatever it takes to protect my family."

- Zoey Hunsinger

Zoey Hunsinger wanted the Chancer for her own the moment she laid eyes on it. Orphaned at an early age when her family's farm was caught in the crossfire between Stray and local gangsters, Zoey dreamed of escaping her hand to mouth existence and exploring the galaxy in a ship of her own. Her family's brutal death and stints as a criminal assistant, first under Stray and then under the thief Judith Ives, steeped her in the knowledge that the galaxy was a harsh and brutal place and when Gavin Dunn made the mistake of putting too much trust in a vagabond he had just met she jumped at the opportunity to steal the ship. Her underestimation of Dunn's abilities meant that the Chancer did not remain hers for long, but the smuggler stunned her when instead of venting her out the airlock he offered her a place as his copilot-in-training. Under Gavin, Zoey learned the Chancer’s intricacies and nuances and when Stray made a home for himself aboard the ship she resumed combat training under the renegade Spartan. After years of mourning her lost parents she grew to see her dysfunctional crewmates as a surrogate family and despite a heavily cynical outlook cares as much for them as she did for her parents.

Since the deaths of her parents, Zoey's short career has given new meaning to the phrase "broad fields of study." She trained first under Stray, who thought nothing of molding the young girl into a child soldier to fight alongside him on the battlefield. When the brutal nature of Stray's contract killings drove her away, Zoey found a new teacher in the thief Judith Ives, who honed Zoey's technical expertise into a tool to help advance her criminal career. But it was through Gavin Dunn's mentorship that Zoey finally realized her lifelong dream of becoming a starship captain. An excellent pilot and technician, Zoey knows the Chancer like the back of her hand and has recently taken over for Gavin as the ship's chief pilot. Gavin's training focused Zoey on engine maintenance and Slipspace navigation, but Stray has not given up on drilling combat skills into his crewmate. Stray has passed his expertise at close combat on to Zoey, but she has expanded on her training to become an accomplished marksman, surpassing even the trained Spartan in terms of long-ranged accuracy. Zoey is no Spartan and she has no desire to ever become one, but she has learned her lessons well and can hold her own on the battlefield. Simon-G294 "Stray" = "I've lost too many people already. They won't be the next ones on that list. You touch them, and there'll be no hole in this galaxy that's deep enough for you to hide in because I won't rest until I've hunted you down and killed you."

- Simon-G294

Orphan. Failure. Traitor. Murderer. Simon-G294 bore so many hateful stigmas that it's no wonder he discarded his name for the simple title "Stray." Following his desertion from the UNSC and a disastrous raid on Earth, Stray fled UEG space and set up shop on Venezia as a mercenary. Putting his skills as an augmented supersoldier to use as a bounty hunter and enforcer, Stray worked with his AI partner Diana to succeed in a daily struggle to survive. Misfortune seemed to follow him wherever he went; his arrival on the Hunsinger farm heralded its destruction and the orphaning of Zoey, who he reluctantly took in as a ward-turned-apprentice. His violent lifestyle soon pushed her away, but the two young vagrants met each other again while staking out their mutual prey, Gavin Dunn. Stray had fought alongside Dunn after joining the Insurrection and hoped bringing the former rebel to justice might ease the ghosts of his past. Instead, circumstances threw Stray in with his former assistant and the man he had accepted a contract on. Hardened and embittered by the galaxy's hardships and his own misfortune, Stray initially only saw the Chancer as a convenient means of getting from contract to contract without having to pay transportation fees. But his crewmates' willingness to accept him in spite of his brutal past and selfish tendencies gradually broke chinks in the armor he had erected about himself. The Chancer became a home for the young outcast as well as a new lease on life; unfortunately, the past did not simply go away and Stray's latent ambition and the interests countless third parties took in the Chancer’s affairs would stretch his loyalty to his new family to the breaking point.

Though Gavin might claim that the Chancer has no need of an enforcer, Stray begs to differ. Though every member of the Chancer’s crew more than capable of taking care of themselves, the Spartan commando is their trump card for when things get truly out of hand. Gamma Spartans who remember their former comrade as a clumsy failure are often caught off guard by the cunning fighter Gavin sics on the ship's enemies. Stray makes use of an ad hoc arsenal built into his heavily modified armor and prides himself in always having an extra trick up his gauntlet. He has learned to work around Gavin's limited defense budget and the ship is littered with looted weapons, gadgets, and explosives that Stray is either making or bribing Zoey to make for him. Behind Stray's callous, cynical exterior lurks a truly frightening killer with a penchant for brutal close combat and merciless methods that hearken back to a darker time before he found his way onto the Chancer.

"You didn't really think you'd be satisfied playing cabin boy the rest of your life, did you? You have to wake up eventually."

- Diana to Simon-G294

During an encounter with the, Stray was believed dead when he was caught up in the destruction of an enemy carrier. But he had, in fact, survived to be taken prisoner by the Covenant. With the help of Diana he reversed his situation and swore allegiance to Jul 'Mdama, seizing command of a specialized Covenant battalion in an ambitious bid for power. Determined to win 'Mdama's trust, he led his unit on a series of endeavors that eventually brought him into conflict with his former family. The shocked crew survived several close encounters with Stray's unit, and though he eventually abandoned his dreams of seizing power within the Covenant, the shame and guilt over what he had done prevented him from seeking forgiveness from Gavin and the others. Instead, he chose to return to his previous life of wandering the frontier, once again alone in the galaxy. Tal 'Zerex = "For as long as I can remember I have felt this rage boiling inside of me. But here, on this vessel, I feel peace, but don't mistake that for complacency. Try to take this peace from me and I will not rest until you are broken beneath my feet."

- Tal 'Zerex

Tal is often seen as the odd one out in the Chancer's 'diverse' crew. Orphaned at a young age after his keep was annihilated Tal lead a solitary existence on the streets of one of Sanghelios's cities. Seeking to escape his poverty and loneliness he joined the military. Despite finding some purpose in the Covenant's genocidal war Tal's career was brought to a sudden end when he suffered severe injuries during the. He was only saved thanks to cybernetic augmentation but this also lead to stigmatization by the very culture he had been raised in. Following the end of the war he left to wander the galaxy and eventually found his calling as a gladiator, putting his natural combat skills to use for the violent amusement of others. Tal eventually freed himself from the Pits to become a wandering mercenary. However his time as a gladiator had cost him a lot and as he took more jobs his own sanity begun to spiral away even as he became more and more ruthless and psychotic. Eventually his unquenchable fury was his downfall and he was thrown in the hell prison Helion V. Driven to near breaking point by his past actions Tal was pulled back to reality by fellow human inmate Gavin Dunn. The pair were able to escape the prison and Tal, seeing the chance for something to live for again, chose to bind himself in honour to Captain Dunn and join his crew.

Compared to the other three, Tal is the crew's heavy hitter and the main form of 'physical protection'. Whereas Simon has a wide array of skills and tools to keep his friends alive Tal achieves this through his appearance and demeanour, often accompanying Gavin on trade agreements and ensuring that the employer gets the message. Tal's intuitive combat skills also come in handy whenever the crew find themselves in a bind as Tal skilled in a range of combat techniques, ranging from close quarters and marksmanship to bomb making. Outside of combat and intimidation Tal usually puts his strength to use as a heavy lifter, moving crates and helping repair the ship where needed. Diana= » Searching Files « » … » …. » ….. » File not found. Deleted on  by G. Dunn. Full data purge, no backup file detected.

Literary Appearances

 * On The Hunt
 * On The Run
 * The Girl From the Hangar
 * Hammer Fall (Alternate storyline)