The Grand Elk is a Venusian-made long-haul freightliner formerly belonging to Grizzly John. Built around a large interior loading space and two fold-out tow hitch arms, the Grand Elk is designed to move a large volume of cargo across great distances as quickly and safely as possible. While there are many ships like it hauling goods across the Sol system, the Grand Elk was the ship Grizzly John hired both Red Raven's Amy and Timberwolf's Bryce onto, giving the helmsman and navigator, respectively, their first real jobs in the starship business.
Like many other long-haul freighters, the Grand Elk has been modified to give it more thrust, shaving valuable time off what can be very long flights through space. Factory-standard freighters are built with two top-set engines in order to keep them distant from underslung cargo chains, but savvy starfarers have found that they can stack a third engine in the space above and between the standard two to get a big easy boost out of their ships. Since cargo chains aren't able to withstand prolonged rides in warp drive, many long-haul freighters practice what is known as "warp skipping", where they will dip briefly into the Sol system's warp currents, get a boost of speed and then exit warp to carry that momentum in regular space. Warp-skipping is dangerous and not recommended by freightline safety commissions but basically every freightliner with a good helmsman and navigator team does it, since the alternative involves spending very long times in deep space with minimal defenses and a bellyful of valuables.
The key to moving freight from world to world is "volume". If you're going to make the trip, make as much of it as you possibly can, because it might be a long time before someone can begin making another long journey to your planet. The Solar standard that has emerged for hauling cargo is the Grav Chain: large companies load industrial-scale shipments into very long, very large containers which are bundled into clusters and delivered all at once. The standard shipping container is warehouse-sized, with a ballasted exterior and segmented interior "rooms" in order to minimize freight loss to deep space crate damage. These crates are then lifted and fitted onto grav chains, which are long square-housed cylindrical gravity wells designed to be the same length and width as a shipping container. A loading platform will affix and then rotate shipping crates to allow other crates to be loaded and banded together with metal brackets; a completed segment carries four containers, each stabilized by having its interior cargo held "down" by the same central gravity well. These segments are then linked together end-to-end in a dockyard, where a freighter positions itself at the lead segment, latches on with its tow hitch arms and carries the train off into space. Liquid cargo can be affixed to a grav chain in special reinforced spherical containers designed to link up with standard cargo units.
As one would expect, a freightliner is a ripe target for space bandits looking to make an easy score. Bandits tend to attack freightliners in one of two ways: they'll either land someone on a freight train, decouple the grav chain, let the freightliner carry on their way and then see what they got inside the now-freefloating crates. Or the bold ones will attack the freightliner itself with intent to stop it and board it, as most freighters' interior cargo holds carry personal cargo rather than the industrial goods hauled in the crates, and this can often be more valuable. Freighters rely more on having excellent radar antenna arrays to detect incoming threats and warp skipping to defend themselves than they do their weapons turrets or shield arrays.
The Grand Elk had a good track record of staying safe under Grizzly John's command, its crew completing many successful runs from one end of the system to the other before its captain retired and set up his two star crewmen to captain their own ships. Amy and Bryce never knew who Grizzly John had sold the Grand Elk to until the night they were reunited with their first ship again. Word had spread of sightings of a shipwreck just outside Jovian space, a real big one too, scattered in a cluster just off a major trade route. Red Raven arrived at the described location first, with Timberwolf showing up shortly after, and there the two rival salvage companies found the wreck of the Grand Elk, its engines blasted and its grav chain scattered around it. The two captains wouldn't bicker or fight over salvage rights to this job, it was a solemn discovery and a moment where the two agreed it was best to work together to see this one through. Amy and Bryce would suit up to board the Grand Elk one last time to walk through its corridors, see the old quarters and stand on the bridge again, at helm and navigation, just like they used to. The ship's internal cargo space had been raided, whoever hit the Grand Elk wanted something in its belly rather than in its freight train. Keera, Clover, Kollori and Emily would work together to recover the ship's logs, finding out where it was heading in its final moments, while Dr. Lin and Dr. Syff searched for survivors among the crew. Their search wasn't very fruitful.
The end of the Grand Elk's run was handled quietly by two of its own children. The Ermine's robotic arm and laser cutter array would carve up the remaining blasted hull to compact and transport, and the Jackrabbit II would use its magnetic top deck to latch onto the underside of a recoupled grav chain and tow it the rest of the way to its destination, a moonside space port on Callisto. The two crews would meet up again in Titan Garden, at an upscale restaurant called The Trident, to split their respective takes from the salvage job. The two captains, Amy and Bryce, would raise one last toast to The Grand Elk, the ship that brought the whole noisy, motley, surly lot of them together. They all ate well that night.