The Ghostship Mathematica was a Tharg's 3rillers story that ran in 2000AD Prog 1827 and 2000AD Prog 1828.
Script: David Baillie
Art: Inaki Miranda
Colours: Eva de la Cruz
Letters: Annie Parkhouse
Synopsis
Eleven year old Marble Jones worked in his father's tavern. He listens in on the stories that the sailors tell, particularly of pirates and the legendary Ghostship Mathematica. When a genuine pirate walks in to the tavern one evening and gets involved in a barroom brawl Marble takes his opportunity to escape his violently abusive father and stows away on the pirate's ship.
On board the ship, Jones is discovered but is surprised that there are only two crew members, and that they don't try to send him back home. The pirate captain reveals that he stole a map during the brawl earlier that reveals the location of the Ghostship Mathematica.[1]
The crew manage to find the Ghostship and then set out to find the abandoned Earth. They have to evade the Marauders but are betrayed by Engineer Wilson, who has tired of digital life. The crew manage to escape in a pod, but eventually (days after the two robotic crew members have powered down) the Marauders catch up with the escape pod's unique engine signature. They land on the jungle planet but are thwarted by an EMP-pulse. Marble takes the Marauder's ship, uses their robotic bodies as hosts for the mathematica's human crew and uploads the Captain to the ship's system.
Locations
The Port, a planet
Characters
Marble Jones
The Captain, robot pirate
Zerg Rush
The Blacksmith, engineer, robot pirate
Chief Jones, mathematica human
Engineer Wilson, mathematica human
Dullaghan, mathematica human
Quartermaster, mathematica human
Navigator, mathematica human
Entities
The Marauders, a robot pirate crew