Who pilots the Chaos forces ships and fleets?

I have always wondered this but who would mainly pilot them? I know the chaos space marines are too few to be on every single ship, and I don't think cultists and mutants would make good pilots and crew. Would it be traitor guardsman, or would the ships be somewhat possessed with daeoms and somewhat organic etc.?

Aboard the Vengeful Spirit and many traitor ships that appear in novels and codexes, crew men made out mutants, cultists, and traitor admech run and pilot the ship.

In Khayon's ship, there were Beastmen tribes taken from the planet of sorcerers. They ran the ship alongside the humans slaves. It was noted that they a stiff feud between the Beastmen and human crew, IIRC.

Why would cultists not make good pilots?

The Imperial Navy has traitors too, you know, user. Maybe you shouldn't completely forget the organization that runs most Imperial ships when asking who runs Chaos ships.
Anyway, the answer "Who pilots" is either a trusted cultists or a slave-servitor physically bonded to the console. "Who commands" is a CSM, human Chaos Lord or Arch-Heretic, Traitor Navy captain, or whoever.

Slaves consisting of captured Imperial Navy officers and crew, Space Port crew, civilians of varying skillsets. From Bridge Officers to menials, CSM crew their ships with appropriate humans, servitors, and traitor Mechanicum.

>Deltrian

Aren't chaos pirates a thing? Seem to recall them being a class in one of the Black Crusade books.

I usually think of em as the insane, self harming and a bit dumb kinda people

>and I don't think cultists and mutants would make good pilots and crew
most of them don't. Fortunately, Chaos forces tend to have massive amounts of turnover.

Yeah, the cultists aren't the most well-trained or even remotely reasonably suited to the task. Been drinking too much of the Kool-aid for a bit.
If insufficient mortals are available, some of the ship AI's of the older vessels from the very old days turned to chaos (like some of the very big badass titans). I'd imagine some imperial ship AI's went to chaos too (picturing that one episode of Andromeda where the ship AI flips the fuck out and kidnaps everyone).

Some also might be posessed or have their crew fused to them