Tiggly

Tiggly is the name of Gel’s ship, a Colian Thistler, a design that never caught on. It’s a clunker. From visual inspection or scan, it appears to be little more than a derelict and begs the question of how it is still in service. It is an ancient and obsolete model of a small cargo vessel originally developed by the Colians, and is probably the only one still in operation. A few other models are known to be in museums.

The ship’s five cargo holds are modular segments, incomplete toroids, any of which can be disconnected from the main body of the ship manually from within each hold or remotely from the ship’s bridge.

Tiggly possesses five spacious cabins for crew, each equipped with its own emergency pod.

Five additional rooms complete the main ship body (the Colians like doing things in five) and these have been configured to serve as mess, gym and locker room, entertainment theatre, infirmary, and engineering facility. These spaces appear to have been designed from the same components as the cargo holds, and are likely incomplete toroids, though they have been more permanently connected to the main core of the ship.

Gel could conceiveably upgrade to a better vessel (for those circumstances where she needs a vessel), but prefers the camouflage such a disreputable ship provides. Instead, she has replaced all internal systems with new equipment that meets very rigorous specifications (including shielding from sensors) while leaving the old systems active but disconnected from vital services or the new systems. The presumption is that any other vessel will underestimate or otherwise simply dismiss her as being neither a threat nor a profitable target.

Tiggly is registered as a Thistler class vessel out of Pinth-II, 3012868955, designation: Tiggly, Angela Colson commanding. The registration number is an easter egg: it's the phone number of the Goddard Office of Communications at NASA.

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