The machine crouched in a field at the edge of town appeared, at first glance, to be some sort of spaceship. Most of the crew reckoned it had been at some point; it wasn't even close to being aerodynamic and quite a lot of the machinery inside it was completely useless in an environment with normal gravity. But whatever it had been once, it wouldn't be taking anyone off-planet any time soon. It hadn't been even close to functional when Six found it in a crater in Lambastia and not even Eliza could make it spaceworthy again.
Still, as an airship the Croesus worked reasonably well, and they did still have Eliza on hand to deal with any catastrophic mechanical failures. Usually. It had begun with a kind of blocky shape, a brick in space, but a number of additions had been made so it would fly in the air as well; not least of them the wings and a set of spindly legs to support it when not in flight. The name would probably not have been Six's choice, but it was already painted on the side, and none of them could get it to come off. And as Marvel often reflected, there were far worse names to be saddled with.
They were here looking for work, the air-travel kind, though mail delivery or smuggling or carrying a passenger didn't make much difference to them. Most of the crew had headed into town for a bit—Belle, as the newest hire and the youngest, had been left behind to watch the ship, and Six was still inside arguing with someone or other. Belle was sort of unclear on the details.
She'd drifted away from the gangplank to get away from Six's yelling, which could be heard even from outside the ship, and now she was drawing a design in the dirt with her paw as she watched for potential customers. Honestly, when Six had hired her she'd expected things to be more exciting than this, but so far all that'd happened was Marvel and Tobias got in an argument over dinner and Six was being harassed by some kind of authority figure. Maybe a client would shake things up.