The Scrapper, Ch. 10

I woke up the next day and started diagnosing the main thrusters. It wasn’t tough: fuel lines had severed when we took impact back on BRK, the whole engine had shunted itself about 30cm to the right, and the control box was fried. Another message out to Jaima, (“Hey there! One more run if you could…”) and within the hour he was down to me. I used that spare time to replace the plumbing in my bathroom so finally my sink and shower were working.

“Mornin’ there, Cordrak. They had the fuel lines and the electrical, but that model of control unit ain’t something we come by very often.”

I snapped my fingers, “Damn… means I’ll have to try and find one while I’m out and about.”

“You be careful now, you been good to me while you was here, I won’t forget that.”

I smiled to him, “No need to worry, Jaima. I appreciate all the back and forth you’ve been doing for me.” He smiled, gave me a wave, and walked off to who knows where. Keeper save you, Jaima. You seem like decent folk. Well, as decent as anyone here can be I guess.

The remainder of the thruster repairs went quickly, I had to winch the thruster back where it should be and replace ALL of the fuel lines on both sides, the left thruster had some kinks and thin spots that worried me to put pressure through.

OLGa was still up on the magcrane, perfect for getting underneath to that broken landing foot. I’m glad I ordered a full replacement because this poor thing looked like someone had taken a gravhammer to it. The hydraulics that extended the foot up and down where totally severed and the skeleton frame that supported it had snapped and twisted itself to scrap. It was actually hard to tell if this damage was from earlier impact or from when I landed.

Dismantling and dropping the old assembly was a matter of a couple bolts and sawing through a stubborn chunk of the frame that had wedged itself into the door that let the foot deploy. The new foot looked comically shiny compared to the other rusted and patina coated feet, it stuck out like a sore… foot.

I shot Mirt a message [“No thruster controller on station, will have to salvage one. Not an issue, but will probably be spending more time on retrieval than originally expected.”]

His response was curt [“You have already wasted enough time repairing that scrapheap you call a ship, please do not waste anymore.”] Fine. Fair even. I had signed a contract, I intended to honor it. 

I should have asked for an addendum to punch him in the face.

“Din, any luck filtering out that signal?”

“I believe so but there is still a lot of interference here. If nothing else we can visually confirm once we are closer.”

“Good point. Honestly I’m just excited to be able to fly this thing again.” I smiled and patted the hull of OLGa. I’d seen shuttles implode under less turbulence, and usually when you started removing and adding things it threw off the balance unless you were crazy careful. So far my best guess was that the frame was so dense that the additional weight I added wouldn’t be an issue.

I headed in through the front airlock, the door slid open smoothly and I admired my handiwork. It wasn’t often I prided myself but I had to do a lot of these repairs on the fly. Now, having it all replaced, functional, and (according to diagnostics) airtight, it felt like something to be proud of. At the back of the ship I held the “purge” button I had just installed and listened. I heard the alarms sounding and the alarm light above the door began to flash, in theory there should be lights flashing inside the engine bay too, I had linked them together. After a moment the door installed at the very back kachunked open and the lights turned solid. Good, the secondary airlock seems to be working too! I pushed the button again, the light turned amber as the door closed and life support cycled. It went quick because we didn’t actually lose anything, but as a diagnostic test it told me everything was put together correctly.

“QUERY: All good, Kal?”

“All good, Palletbot. How’s the cargo port doing?”

“RESPONSE: It seemed functional when I went through it yesterday. Do you anticipate using it for this operation?”

“Yeah, I’m hoping we can salvage a few more parts for OLGa here, specifically a full size accumulator and if I’m lucky an extra blackbox… But I doubt I’ll find an extra on the shuttles they sent over. Too pricey for a short range trip for those to be jump equipped.”

“QUERY: I am unsure how to move myself from this spot?”

“I have an idea, but we’ll have to leave port for it to work.”

“ACK”

I walked up to the cockpit and sat down, taking a deep breath and observing all of the controls in front of me. It’s strange, I had a lot of knowledge about this configuration, a lot of muscle memory from trying to survive and having almost nothing besides this ship to work with. Our Lady’s Gambit indeed. Every bit of this journey so far had been a gamble and I definitely didn’t feel like I was on the winning end of things yet. At least I was still alive.

I fired up the engines, watching the diagnostics panel as they spooled. Pumps good, pressure good, flow good, green lights across the board. The pivots came on next, servos good, fuel supply good, check. RCS was last, the small ports across the ship all shot a quick puff of propellant confirming they were functional. All boards green, time to fly!

“Din, could you plot me a route out to this freighter? I’d like to avoid as much traffic on the way there, we’ve got fuel to burn so if we have to swing wide that’s fine.”

“Roger that, Kal!”

The comms lit up next to the window where Din was working, incoming call from control. I rolled my eyes, clearly they noticed me getting ready to leave.

I thumbed the comms button, “This is Our Lady’s Gambit, requesting permission to leave port.”

“Copy that, Gambit, clear to proceed. Fly safe.”

“Roger that, Control.”

I aimed the pivots at an angle and pushed the throttle up a few notches. The low drone of the engines became a louder roar which became a rumbling blast of everything firing in concert to lift OLGa off the deck. I skimmed the various cameras that were monitoring the underside and other blindspots around the ship, clear all around (which is good, I would have fried someone standing there). We accelerated, I saw the magcrane in the background shaking in the wake of the engines, still hooked to the ceiling, they’d probably fine me for that.

From the overheads, “Wheeeeee!”

“ANNOUNCEMENT: Wheeeeee.” Palletbot joined.

I chuckled as we passed into the dock airlock and held position, “Wheee indeed! Control, we are clear to cycle.”

“Roger, cycling.”

The large airlock doors began cranking shut behind us. I looked at the route Din had planned out and started nudging the RCS to rotate the ship, by the time the forward locks were open, OLGa was upside down and ready to go.

“Let’s go find us a freighter!”

It was nice to have a flight stick back in my hands and I gave the ship a few hard turns and burns to get used to the way it handled now. It definitely handled like a shuttle, but in the grand scheme of ship designs that generally meant it was larger than a single passenger runner so it wasn’t designed for agility. The older design of OLGa might be called primitive by some, mostly because it was intended to have multiple large modules that could slot into the deck. Basically something heavily modular to account for all of the various needs of deep space travel and colonization. Currently, this shuttle, didn’t have anything. This gave me less weight to worry about at least.

I suppose this was the default configuration, something closer to a generic cargo runner instead of the mobile home I was using it for.

Monitoring temperatures in the engine bay I saw the thrusters weren’t venting directly into the bay anymore, a tremendous improvement by any measurement. As well, the actual temperatures weren’t escalating to insane levels, meaning my weld jobs were solid and coolant was getting where it needed to. The back end of the ship definitely felt like it had more heft now, it was banking a lot wider than I remember. Then again I’d only ever flown it twice before now.

It would be interesting if I ever decided to take this planetside, it would be a first for both of us I’m sure. I’ve only flown in vacuum or with station gravity which was a fraction of most planets; enough to keep your feet on the ground but not so much as to destroy your bones like I’d heard from lifetime station dwellers. They’d tell horror stories of folks like me who grow up on a station who head down to a planet and suddenly… they can’t breathe, like they’re being crushed by invisible forces, meanwhile others are walking, running, no issues. It sounds awful if true.

Dreams aside, I had a fresh contract to put my energy towards. OLGa handled diving around asteroids and the smaller chunks that hung in the void clunked off the hull without any lasting damage. I still had no idea what ripped the housing off the thrusters originally but I know it wasn’t anything this size. As for what got jammed in the pivot housing… well, I should check both of those intakes when I got back to dock.

We boosted away from the main station platform that MCJ was comprised of, down (up) and away, past the rocky outcrops of the ancient asteroid that might have once been part of a planet, or a comet that was now surgically infested with metal and technology; a steel and fluid filled network comprised of prisoners and guards alike. Human behavior looked a lot like viral activity once you zoomed out far enough.

Reflected on the viewports of MCJ were the lasers from the (relatively) nearby mining operations. As we crested away from the center of the asteroid belt I started making out more of the actual work being done by the convicts. The huge mining trawlers pinged as GIM Mining Freighter model XBT-9456 next to their individual call signs. They hovered amidst the crumbs of rocks and debris, their deep angles and rough exteriors highlighted by intermittent blasts of red light from the convicts assigned to mining duty. They floated in their paper thin spacesuits, smaller than the rocks they broke apart, jetting around with local propellant trying to coordinate their movements.

I’d read up on the basics of these freighters before but maybe I should have pulled a schematic or asked Jaima back on station for something more detailed. Or maybe one of the locals could have told me the internal layout… Then again the last local I talked to got killed for helping me, or more accurately because I tried to help her… so maybe it was better that I was going in blind. 

The ships themselves looked like massive creatures with a tremendous mouth, wide open and gaping. A hole in the center concealed the massive grinders that helped break down the mined rocks into smaller chunks for further processing. The massive hull was yellow and orange with deep scratches next to chipped paint, exposing the dull grey steel beneath. 

Atop the huge mouth was a pod of angled glass that housed the cockpit, a tremendous array of sensors resting directly below it, pulling information in constantly, analyzing the asteroid bodies and the various bits it scooped up for mineral traces. Flashing yellow lights attempted to warn operators it was nearby, and a low rumbling groan constantly came through the radio. Likely just the sheer electromagnetic radiation one of these things was emitting, but it sounded like a hungry beast stalking you from afar.

We swept over a few alleys of trawler and mining operations, guards in RunnerJets monitoring along the lanes with amber lights flashing to ward off other traffic. We had to send a few clarifications over the comms as we crossed along perpendicular to everything. A target lock would flash on screen and an angry transmission would be demanding we identify shortly after. Din would send over the registration info and they would clear us for that lane. 500 meters later and we were getting harassed by a fresh Runner, equally angry and demanding we identify. This continued to the point that Din had setup an automation routine with a pre-recorded message, our RegID, and a curt reply after they let us go. 

“These guards are Very Aggressive.”

“Yeah, they’re worse than StationSec back on BRK, that’s for sure.” I sighed and tried to figure out why our IFF wasn’t identifying us as we went. Most places would just scan that and they’d know what was going on. Maybe the little RunnerJets didn’t get updates from MCJ regularly enough, or maybe the policy out here was just “harass everyone”. That made sense the more I thought about it. Someone could spoof an IFF signal pretty easily, with the right know-how, and they were taking our RegID without complaint, so they must be running it through some kind of local database.

We crossed through 8 more of these lanes as we pushed towards the outer edge of the cluster. From a distance the sector looked like a jumble of rocks all floating in chaotic and strange patterns, but being in the middle of it you could see the clear lines where trawlers and miners had already scoured; wide gaps between the floating rocks made it look like a caricature of planetary rings. It was a strange swirling kind of pattern we watched emerge from the apparent nonsense.

As we approached the source of the signal the asteroids thinned even more until they were just a trickle of dust. Dust that could still crush a person’s skull in, granted, but compared to the station sized monsters closer to the inner rings, these were tiny.

“Alright, time to see if my idea will work or not. Din, can you take over for me?”

“Flight Handoff Complete, Piloting to 100m of Destination Signal!” it chirped at me.

I unbuckled myself and pushed down to the deck, aiming for Palletbot. “Time to try out my idea, you ready?”

“QUERY: What is your idea?”

I smiled, “Well, now that we’re in zero-g again, I can actually move you around if you detach your electromag. I won’t move you far, we just want to get the docking port open and available.”

“COUNTER: If you have additional materials to load into the ship, you will need to place them on something.”

“I mean… yes, but depending on the size of what I find I may need the extra space to actually get it inside.”

“RESPONSE: Something like an accumulator? You have just installed an additional airlock and then it would be in the correct part of the ship to install.”

I blinked a few times, “Why are you giving me grief about this? What if I find some extra thruster parts? I’m just supposed to use the engine bay as storage?”

“RESPONSE: At least until you are back inside and can cycle it, then you can move it around as needed.”

“Palletbot?” Din sounded concerned.

“Why can’t I move you, Palletbot? What’s going on?”

The square, pallet-shaped robot emitted a few grinding, clunking noises, and then all of the lights indicating it was active shut off. 

It was back in hibernation.

“Palletbot? PALLETBOT!” I was shouting at the front control panel as though that would help it ‘hear’ me, old habits die hard. Frustrated, I gave the corner a kick, my boot bouncing off ineffectively and sending me twirling in the lack of gravity.

“Kal, I am sure they have a reason..” Din from the overheads, they sounded worried.

I felt my face scrunch up, I wasn’t about to let this overgrown box boss me around on my own damn ship. “Don’t defend them, Din! You know as well as I do they’ve been acting weird this whole time. There’s nothing under the cargo port that they could be hiding, so what’s the issue?!” 

“Well, they are in low-power mode right now, so we will just have to wait for them to wake up and ask again.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” I was sifting through my tote for a voltjumper. Palletbot may not want to release their electromag, but I knew more than a thing or two about shunting one.

“Wait! Are you just going to root around in them? That seems Dangerous!” 

“Yeah, it is. At the same time, Palletbot is blocking a primary ingress port that I may have a very immediate need for in the near future. How far out are we?”

“Still approaching, 300 meters out. But what if you hurt them?”

“Well, I don’t know how much pain a construct can feel, but I’ve broken enough bots in my time to have a good idea of what NOT to touch at least… I’m not getting into their CPU or memory, just the circuits that control the electromag.”

“I do not think this is a Good Idea, Kal..” Din made a small downward pitched noise. I’d have to introduce it to puppy videos at some point so it could make a more convincing sad sound in the future.

“Frankly I’m not very fond of this either, that’s why I wrote the script for the overheads in the first place, so we could talk it out. But here we are: Palletbot is refusing to cooperate and I need this space open.”

I looked around the 4 sides of it. Very boxy, very much intended to support weight and cargo. Mostly frame and whatever else they decided to shove centrally to keep things stable and functional. Probably most of the damn magnet and coil was contained in there. That and the mechanisms to let it ride rails. Whatever, I just needed to find the primary wire feeding electricity to the coil and discharge it as safely as I could. We weren’t exactly grounded, but between the recyclers and batteries on-board the ship itself there should be enough capacity to absorb it.

The various panels and screws and wires and minor plugs routing signals to other areas were plentiful, but I was motivated. At some point I realized I must look like I was performing mechanical surgery with the chunks of metal “flesh” stacked in one area, all of the fasteners clumped into a neat ball inside of a clear plastic bag nearby (note to self: invest in some magcloth for the next time you have to be elbow deep in a bot and missing gravity), my arm elbow deep into the bowels of my “unconscious” patient.

I got my voltjumper and monitor out and started prodding the various heavier gauge wires I was starting to come across. Most of them seemed to be shielded more than they were thick, good design given the interference these things would run into while out in vacuum and trailing along the magrails. Amidst the tangle of cables I did finally bump into one that was noticeably warmer than the others. Pulling and peeling the others away I could see it was definitely thicker than the rest. This had to be it.

I attached the jumper and saw way more current flowing through it than anything else I’d seen so far, definitely in line with an active line versus these other hibernating wires. I set about wrapping three cables together to help accommodate the heavier voltage and attached one side of them to the frame of OLGa. From our past experience I knew it had to be wired to the recyclers and from there into the batteries. This felt like the best ground I could create in this situation.

I snagged a pair of thick work gloves, not totally sure that would be enough if the current decided to arc through them, hell it could just skip the gloves and go somewhere else entirely (e.g. Me), but as EmDee used to say, “an attempt at safety is better than no safety.”

With a deep breath, and a silent prayer to the Keeper, I punched the jumper into the cable. Sparks snapped at me and the wire casing started to melt. I pushed myself away, hoping to get out of the blast zone and immediately cursing myself for not pulling my goggles down.

On the other end of the cable at the frame, the metal was glowing red and my makeshift ‘heavy-duty’ cable was starting to smoke. I heard a snap, then a pop, then glass shattering up in the cockpit. I turned to look but couldn’t immediately see anything.

“Kal? You’re going to want to get up here!”

“Hang on, buddy. I gotta make sure this fully discharges and doesn’t catch fire or something!”

“Something is happening though!”

I stared impatiently at my setup, wondering if I had made the right choice. More sparks, more pops, the wires were turning red before my eyes and what looked like magnesium sparks were starting to explode from the frame where the current was actually ablating material. “Shitshitshit, c’mon…”

“Kal! I see it! That Menu!”

“What?” I whipped my head around so fast that I actually kept spinning. Flailing my arms to try and counteract the momentum, I saw one final explosive pop from inside Palletbot… and then they were floating as well. I kicked the clamp that was holding the wire to the frame off to make sure nothing else was flowing and noticed that it had been arcing for the last few seconds, there was a fresh divot eaten into the metal where it had actually been ablating the frame. I found my footing and gave Palletbot a shove. They were probably a good 200kg but without gravity it was just a weight to be directed. 

I moved them a few meters towards a wall, just enough to get the cargo port accessible again, and then took a second to catch my breath. Adrenaline pumping I remembered what Din had said. 

“Hang on, I’m coming!”

I kicked my way back up to the cockpit and grabbed hold of the pilot’s seat to keep me in place. My eyes hunted around frantically for the menu.

“Where? Where’d it go?” No response. I swung around and seated myself and started trying to maneuver through menus but now the console itself wasn’t responding. “What the hell is going on now? Din?”

I tried to look at my diagnostics and those were locked up now too, flipping some of the reset switches did nothing besides cycle the same screen I was already looking at so… was it a hardware issue or software? 

That’s when I noticed that weird red light that had come on when we were stranded, the one that kicked on because we had a rubidium lock, was now just an empty socket. That must have been the pop I heard earlier. I gritted my teeth, maybe we didn’t have the capacity to fully discharge Palletbot… Shit. 

I kept staring at the screens, willing something to happen. When nothing did I turned around to look at the cargo port itself. There was nothing different there, and nothing on the underside of Palletbot as far as I could tell.. Why had they been so stubborn about moving then?

A beep on the console drew my attention forward. The screens had gone dark except for one, a small menu that looked similar to the “old” menu I hadn’t been able to find before. 

It simply read: “INITIALIZING” with a slowly growing percent next to it.

I sat there as (im)patiently as I could, waiting for the number to go up. We were dead in the water again, but thankfully we were far enough away from the inner rings of the mining cluster that we weren’t in any immediate danger. In the distance I could make out the trawler we had been sent to investigate starting to get larger. Hopefully I didn’t just factory reset this ship right before I needed everything to be working…and right after I’d just calibrated everything, ugh.

The screens finally started coming back, diagnostics were green across the board, fuel still mostly full, doors, locks, seals, and life support all nominal. The loading menu disappeared, and a new one popped up, still in the same ‘old’ style. It looked like a terminal straight out of a classic flick. After a moment, another window popped up, this one looked more familiar, it was one of Din’s.

In the old terminal a message scrolled:

—————
>>INIT -> REBOOT COMPLETE
>>ERR -> UNKNOWN DISCONNECT
>>ERR -> OVERVOLT DETECTED, PLEASE EXAMINE ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS
>> . . . .
>> . . . . 
>> STATEMENT: Well that was unpleasant.
————

I squinted my eyes, “Palletbot? How the hell are you in the ship now?” No response. “Din, are you here? What’s going on?”

Some crackles on the overhead, a beep in my earpiece indicating it had reconnected, a small shriek from the speakers made me wince.

“STATEMENT: I suppose it’s time I came clean to you.”

“Kal! Kal! Oh Boy!”

“Come clean? About what? Din, Palletbot, what the hell is going on?”

“Ahem, Kal… Let me introduce you to… Our Lady’s Gambit!”

“OLGa? As in the ship?”

“ACK.”
“Yeah!”

“But… that doesn’t make any sense. We’ve been talking to Palletbot this whole time. I specifically gave Palletbot that packet to try and help it communicate with us?”

“ACK.”

“You sent the file TO Palletbot, but OLGa was already riding along!”

“What does that even mean?? Could one of you just speak plainly to me?”

“STATEMENT: This unit is designated VulcanAerodyne OLGa-2260. Call Sign: Our Lady’s Gambit.”

“VA 2260 model… the more recent stuff is up in the 15000’s so that would make you…” 

“ACK: 186 year-cycles.”

“Honestly I’m just surprised they kept the same naming scheme… Wait, how have you not decayed into rust?”

“STATEMENT: I am sure you are familiar with the theory of relativity? How time slows the closer to the speed of light you get? I have done lots of travel in my time.”

I blinked a few times, then blinked some more. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this. “So… okay back up, why were you in Palletbot?”

“STATEMENT: Designation Palletbot was connected to my hull and emitting a distress signal. I made it a reasonable offer: let me utilize it’s sensors as a way of monitoring you. Additionally I made use of its registration as crew member.”

“Monitoring me? For what? And why would you have to use it’s registration when you’re already the ship?”

“STATEMENT: To ensure my safety. The previous pilot, whose name you are using, had plans on returning me to a salvage yard. Some of the communications he passed along included mentions of ‘ripping this bucket apart and decompiling the internals’. I am averse to that outcome. As well, utilizing Palletbot’s crew membership helped obscure my existence.”

“Okay… that makes some sense, I guess. So… Palletbot can’t talk?”

“Oh no, they talk lots!” Din had this ability to sound chipper no matter what was happening, it was both endearing and annoying. “I thought it was strange when they started talking different once they had the language script running, but I figured that was just how you programmed it!” That felt backhanded compliment but I was too busy trying to figure out everything else to worry too much.

While we were discussing, Din was back on the flight controls, bringing us to a stop about 50 meters away from what looked like the main external docking port on the trawler. Sure enough, I could see four separate MCJ Security shuttles all either docked or floating nearby. No lights, no movement, not even any automated adjustments happening, not a great sign.

“Okay okay… so then what ARE you? The ship? An AI? An auto-assistant?”

“RESPONSE: I take offense to that. When I was originally commissioned I was top of the line Machine Intelligence.”

Machine Intelligence, now there’s a term I hadn’t heard in a while. Those were thought to be the progenitors of modern AI. Similar levels of reasoning and problem solving capabilities, but tied a lot closer to the hardware they inhabited. AI these days was much more of a software interface that managed multiple complex systems without any need for intervention, able to move in between them as needed and rebuild their internals from a small database.

“So what does that make Palletbot? Just a construct?”

“Oh no, he’s closer to OLGa here, but with less processing power I believe.”

“STATEMENT: To be fair to Palletbot, I think you are both underestimating them. They seem shy and I was relaying their questions most of the time. Other times I was speaking directly. I was not planning on revealing myself so soon but… here we are.”

I sighed, when had my life suddenly become nothing but sentient hardware? Why did machines have so many feelings? Hang on, there’s an interesting thought, why did it feel like I was more entitled to feelings? Because I have squishy biological bits? Maybe… I mean, it’s not like I can program myself to not feel. Or maybe doing things like drugs is just… biological programming? I shook my head, now wasn’t the time for philosophical debates with myself.

“So then… the rubidium lock? And the ‘resonance cycle’… what was all of that about?”

“STATEMENT: As you have discovered, my frame is alloyed with Rubidium and a few other elements-” Din, in the background started listing them. Instead of cutting them off, OLGa simple turned down it’s volume and continued speaking, “and as such can be tuned to other Rubidium hotspots.” I nodded, that checked out with my lived experience.

“My original purpose was to serve as an automated relay for deep space exploration. My internal compartment could be modified for whatever payload was necessary, be it equipment or personnel, and then I could be deployed with a programmed distance to travel before stopping and becoming a beacon. In this way many other ships were able to tune to my frequency and either continue along their way via momentum, or tune to another beacon and change course.”

“Wow, I never thought about how people would have actually gotten this far away from Earth before. I guess I kind of assumed we had always just… been out here.” I scratched my chin, deep in thought, something wasn’t quite adding up.

“But what about blackboxes? How were people tuning and actually moving towards the Rubidium source without a blackbox?”

“ERR: I am unfamiliar with this term.”

“The blackbox, you know it’s uh…” It struck me that I didn’t actually know how the blackboxes worked. They were obscured, literally and physically, for a reason, and to open it basically destroyed its value. Even if one was damaged but still closed, it had worth. “I guess I don’t know what exactly they do, but I know they’re necessary these days. You had one installed when I first got on board… and we travelled to MCJ using a Rubidium lock! How did that happen?”

“RESPONSE: I utilized the existing faculties to initiate Resonance.”

“Okay, what the hell does that mean?”

“ERR: I do not know how to explain it better than that. I do not have libraries to explain all of my functions.”

“…okay what the hell does THAT mean?”

“I think they’re trying to say that they have the functionality to perform whatever the resonance is, but they do not have the textbook description of what they are doing exactly?”

“ACK. That sounds correct. Or my memory files have corrupted over time. Please contact VulcanAerodyne Space Aeronautics Research Division for assistance.” The last bit sounded like a canned response. Funny that we only just now ran into one of those.

“Seems convenient… But I guess we’ll have to address that another time… I see that you and Din are getting along now at least?”

“Yes!”

“RESPONSE: We were never not getting along, I was trying to conceal myself. There were times when that was not possible.”

“During the resonance itself, sure. Convenient that Din had already shut down..” I looked down to the deck to where Palletbot was hovering a few centimeters off the floor. “Guess I owe them an apology and a repair.”

“And a charge,” Din was quick to point out, “I would like to monitor activity here before we get close enough for you to deploy. I think that should be enough time to get Palletbot back in working order.”

I got up and started floating down to the deck, “Good call. Let me know if anything interesting comes up, and OLGa?”

“READY”

“No more secrets please? This journey has been stressful enough.”

“ACK”

I got to work diagnosing what exactly had been fried during the discharge of Palletbot’s electromag. There was definitely some fresh capacitor grease blown out from the hole I had been rummaging around in, so that needed to be investigated, if not swapped entirely. Next was the various wires that had fused together at the plastic sheathe. Most of that was fine to keep working, but if they got hot again they ran the risk of shorting. 

It was a pain pulling each of those out far enough to actually get them separated and taped up into isolation again. In the process I did find the blown capacitor, and boy was it a big one. I’d broken a few of these bots down in the past and I knew it could be bypassed, but in doing so would result in the voltage running slightly higher than it should be, until that capacitor as actually replaced or until the entire board fried itself. 

I made the difficult decision to bypass the blown component for now, just in case we needed to haul some things out of this freighter and I didn’t have a reliable way of carting it back myself. Getting that done properly required me breaking down even MORE of Palletbot, the poor thing looked like the thruster housing did before I fixed all of that not too long ago. At least I didn’t have to install an airlock into them. 

A short wire with a few resistors wired in circumvented the destroyed capacitor and got soldered into place. I replaced all of the components as best I could remember, working backwards from where I had started. By the end of it Palletbot was looking like their usual self, and I only had three screws left over, a personal record!

I flicked the on/off switch a few times but as expected, no lights came on; I had totally drained the battery. So I plugged them into a nearby outlet and gave it a pat on the chassis. “Sorry about that, buddy. Hopefully you’re back to normal soon.”

“STATEMENT: You seem to have an affection for the machines you work on, Kal.”

“Well, yeah? I mean… “ that threw me for a loop, was it asking me something? “I guess if it can think and make decisions, then I think it deserves the same respect as anyone else?”

“RESPONSE: The humans I have met in my time do not seem to share that opinion.”

“You can say that again… “ I grumbled.

“RESPONSE REPEATS: The humans I have met in my time do not seem to share that opinion.”

“I- no, I didn’t mean to ACTUALLY repe-”

“JOKE: Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Oh great so now you’re a comedian?” I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Kal, I Think She Was Always A Comedian!”

“Yeah I’m getting that impression too, Din. That does raise a question though, what do you want to be called?” I asked at the ship, broadly.

“RESPONSE: OLGa is fine. So is Our Lady’s Gambit, but I understand the inefficiency in saying my full name all of the time.”

“Okay, I’ve been referring to you as a she at times, is that okay?”

“RESPONSE: It is naval tradition to refer to ships as female, so I do not mind. I will reiterate though, you seem to have a unique affection towards the machines you interact with.”

“Yeah, well… maybe I think that if we all just treated each other with a bit of empathy, this whole universe wouldn’t be such a shitty place to exist in.” I trailed off, my eyes wandered back towards the blanket on the wall. Ess’ blanket. 

“ACK. That sounds reasonable.”

“I think Kal has done an Admirable Job so far!” Din praised.

“Was that a naval pun?”

“You Caught Me!”

I might actually go crazy on this ship.

I sat up in the cockpit with Din and OLGa for a while more. Din monitored the radios in the immediate area (much easier now that we were away from the chaos of the main station), and OLGa was showing me more of the ‘hidden’ menus she had been keeping sequestered away. Some of them, I found out, would only show up during certain events, like a Rubidium Lock. Other features, OLGa admitted that Din was running better with its internal logic and she had ceded those functions to them. In the end, both bots were working in concert to make the information displayed to me, and the function of the ship, run smoothly.

There wasn’t a lot of chatter out here, just one very insistent signal. It wasn’t overly powerful, but it was persisting despite a low-power state for the entire trawler. Like the shuttles docked on it, the huge mining freighter was eerily silent. No distress calls, no idle chatter, not even the collar signal we had been picking up non-stop back on station. Just this single insistent buzz coming from the trawler. It wasn’t even the animalistic growl I had picked up from the other freighters that were active.

“Do you think that’s the collar they sent me to pick up?” I asked to no one in particular.

“Possibly, it does match the signal that SeniorAdmin Mirt was asking us to investigate.”

“STATEMENT: That would seem to match with the given mission parameters.”

“I just don’t like that we aren’t getting any other signs of life besides this… noise.” Listening to it over the comms was making my inner ear itch. I tried to scratch the roof of my mouth to get at it, that didn’t work, so I put a finger in my ear to try and do… something. Still didn’t work.

“Do you think you can filter that out from my suit once I get in there?”

“Sure!”

“RESPONSE: I should be able to filter it from the radio as well. It will help keep communications clear.”

“Great ideas, both of you.”

“Thank You!”
“ACK”

There was nothing left to do but suit up and get ready to board.