Falco Millenniorum Transit
Voidships of the 41st Millennium tend to be ugly, stifling affairs, trapping stale air between slabs of metal, floating tomb-cathedrals filled with hordes of humanity kept barely alive by ageing life-sustainers. The Falco Millenniorum is in all ways a rejection of this, being a sleek, graceful ship, filled with painstakingly-cultivated greenery, and its crew enjoys the privilege of bunking in family groups and small communities. They tend to live very near their duty-stations, and little villages spring up wherever population density and resources allow: most crewmen aboard the Falco rarely have reasons to travel far from their stations.
For those who do, however, the Falco provides stylish and comfortable transport. A pneumatic rail system runs the length of the ship, ferrying cargo and crew at frightening speeds. The rail-cars themselves are heavily-repurposed versions of the great ammunition-carts that ferry macrocannon rounds from the magazines to the batteries, and as such each can comfortably transport up to a dozen passengers or a significant amount of cargo.
The ship is serviced by several parallel networks of rail-lines, each one kept completely separated and isolated from the others. Most of them are service-lines, meant for transporting cargo, which crewmen hitch rides on whenever necessary. There is one Grand Line, designated especially for passengers, which crewmen need to purchase tickets for using the ship-scrip they are issued as payment for on-board expenditure: the cost is balanced out by the guarantee of a seat and not having to share your journey with a volatile piece of ordnance or tank of promethium in transit. The Grand Line cars are not only more comfortable but also somewhat more opulent than the cargo-trains.
The Lord-Captain, of course, has access to his own Executive Line, which is the only rail-line that connects the bridge directly to his quarters. From the bridge, the captain can then transfer to the Grand Line to speed his passage.
For those who wish to traverse the corridors of the Falco Millenniorum without the congestion of the mass-transit system can always walk, of course. Some passages are wide enough to allow for the use of various personal-mobility devices: self-propelled longboards are common. Less-common are the repurposed walking-servitors, automatons that can be hired for a fee to carry a small group and a moderate load.
Lord-Captain Croesus da Solo, always flamboyant in his expenditure, ordered a sort of chariot for his personal use, intended to be drawn by a six-legged, webbed-footed burden-beast known as a dragonnel. The chariot and stable of dragonnels are still aboard, and Lord-Captain Giovanni da Solo occasionally makes use of them for formal processions and the like, but these days the dragonnels’ greatest contribution to shipboard life is via their manure, which by all accounts makes tremendously fertile compost for the ship’s Arboretum.
