The Drowned Rat

The Drowned Rat was never commissioned, certified, or officially launched. It was assembled.

Its original owner was a station salvager who spent years dragging ruined hulls back from the dark: broken shuttles, gutted drones, and especially wrecked Barsuk-class submarines. Barsuks were common enough to find in pieces, cheap enough that nobody asked many questions, and simple enough that a stubborn mechanic could make three dead ones into one living mistake.

The plan was to build a cheap salvage submarine: ugly, durable, easy to repair, and large enough to live in during long recovery jobs. Its frame was welded from scrap pressure plating, old Barsuk compartments, and whatever bulkheads could still pass a hammer test. Nothing matched. Some rooms were older than others. Some wires had been pulled from wrecks that still had blood in them.

Then the war came.

When the fighting worsened, the Coalition began stripping unfinished and civilian vessels for parts. The Drowned Rat was raided before it was complete. Its weapon systems were removed, along with targeting components, spare junction boxes, fire-control equipment, and several internal systems that were deemed “necessary for the war effort.” The Coalition left the hull behind because it was considered too frail, too uneven, and too poorly documented to be worth converting into a military vessel.

To the owner, that was almost an insult.

So he kept working.

Without the original systems, he replaced what had been taken with whatever he could salvage. The battery bank came from a wrecked shuttle. The life support system was never meant for a submarine this size, but it could still push air, so it was bolted in anyway. Much of the wiring was rerouted through old junction spaces and improvised panels. The ship’s systems became a patchwork of civilian salvage, shuttle parts, outpost scraps, and stolen replacements.

But the Drowned Rat still was not ready to sail.

Too large to throw away and too useful to ignore, the unfinished hull was eventually docked permanently to an outpost and converted into cheap extra space. For years, it served less as a submarine and more as a floating apartment block. Mechanics slept in the old crew compartments. Cargo workers stored tools in the half-finished bays. Drifters rented bunks beside exposed wiring and dead control panels. Its corridors smelled of metal dust, old coolant, and recycled air.

The name came from the residents.

The hull leaked often enough that people joked it was not docked to the station, it was drowning beside it. Rats were not supposed to exist on Europa, but the name stuck anyway. Something small, filthy, impossible to kill.

The ship still carries pieces of the old salvage plan. Its depth charge tube was never properly finished and cannot be aimed like a real launcher. Most crews use it to drop decoys, noise makers, or scrap charges behind the vessel when something starts following too closely. It is more of a distraction system than a weapon.

The electrical discharge coil was added later, during its years as station housing. It was not installed for monsters. It was installed for scavengers. People kept cutting away outer plating, stealing cables, prying loose components, and robbing storage spaces. After one too many thefts, the owner wired the coil into the hull and left warning signs that nobody believed until the first thief got thrown across the docking bay.

Eventually, the outpost changed hands, the old owner vanished, and the Drowned Rat was sold as “repairable surplus.” Some say it was bought legally. Others say the docking clamps failed at a very convenient time.

Now it sails again.

It is underarmed for its size, too patched together to inspire confidence, and full of systems that were never meant to work together. Its shuttle battery groans under load. Its life support wheezes. Its wiring has more history than the crew. But the hull still holds, the engines still answer, and the old discharge coil still bites anything stupid enough to get close.

The Drowned Rat is not a proud ship.

It is a survivor.