Reliance was in turmoil, she was finally in touch with a person wearing recognised naval tech once again. Yet she acted like The Flotilla was a lesson in ancient history. On top of that, the tiny crew she had with her were completely off the rails. Who, when confronted with a locked door, starts thinking about plasma based explosives? Had they never considered just knocking?

Of course, in the circumstances that wouldn’t have worked, and desperation had forced her to act in a way she was not proud of. But measures had to be taken, and shaking off the last remnants of her final orders was impossible.

She’d had to bend a few rules to designate them as relief. But she was running out of options here, at this rate, without repairs to essential systems her main engines wouldn’t even last another decade, and who retrieves a ship with no engines? Well in her case the point would be moot, as engine failure would be preceded by core meltdown, and there wouldn’t really be a ship then. Let alone engines.

Well, she still wasn’t particularly happy about the situation. There had been other intruders before, but none had made the effort to restore her. Much less acknowledge her as a being in her own right. Some had even tried looting. She’d dealt with that by redefining stains, and unleashing some modified cleaning drones. Once they were done, the only problem was the disturbing looking super clean, invader shaped silhouettes. Well, some of them were invader shaped, some were bits of invader shaped. But either way, they definitely deterred visitors for a while.

There was only one way to know for sure, she went silent, and left them to their own devices. If they were going to be trouble, they were unlikely to show their plan while they thought she was an active participant.

They were heading towards the dormitory bays, if they instantly started looting she’d get rid of them (except the Captain obviously, she had insufficient rank to dispose of a Captain. Her coding made her uncomfortable even thinking about it. Well turned out worrying about that was pointless, they actually looked at the manifests, carefully noting the empty rooms, and picking one each. While leaving the registered ones alone.

From what she could gather, they were hard up for cash, yet chose to leave the personal possessions of the crew alone. That isn’t to say they didn’t take anything, mind you, but they did actively only take items in communal spaces.

Wait a second, were they heading for the ARMOURY? This was bad, this was REALLY bad. They had requisition rights to Flotilla weaponry. Technology that back in the day had been highly classified. Did she have to consider detonating it all now? Yet again, she was in for a surprise, though, as they actively decided to take minimal supplies. The Captain only took the handful of weaponry The Captain was entitled to as part of the job anyway. They didn’t even take the ceremonial cutlass.

As for the lower ranked crew members, they decided to take absolutely nothing, pending confirmation of their official ranks. Humans actively choosing not to loot weapons was a new one on her, and she had to admit, she quite liked the no nonsense, direct speech that Jenel granted her. It was a rare thing indeed that a human didn’t beat around the bush. Their entire communication, and speech pattern seemed to be designed to be as long, convoluted, confusing, and often times outright misleading as it could possibly be. How humans managed to achieve anything was a small miracle in her eyes.

It seemed that Jenel had discovered the hydroponics bay, her reaction to this was most unexpected. She didn’t realise Jenel had other expressions at all, assuming that she had opted out of that particular feature for her cybernetic components. The high-pitched girlish squeal was a bit of a shock as well.

She felt a pang of familiarity as she gauged Jenel’s reaction here. That enthusiasm, the love of plants, she’d seen it before. It was a bittersweet sensation, and one that was quite unfamiliar. As a ship's AI she had been well taught about emotional reactions, and how to deal with them, without blowing anything up. Though she did keep a fair bit of rage stockpiled to motivate her in combat.

So far she liked the girls, maybe they would make for a good crew yet. All she had to do was reach out.

*************************************************************************

Rea was out for a sweep of the area, as a planetary guard it was expected that she’d ever achieve anything on these long patrols but boredom. The ship practically flew itself, and she felt like she was sitting about with her thumbs up her ass for no reason.

Nothing ever happened on these patrols, they were only there to keep the local merchants happy. The Melters never came to the area, and she was glad of that. Those bastards gave her the creeps. She wasn’t even needed to pilot at the minute, the autopilot could fly this route blindfolded by now. So she was occupying herself with a quick game of darts. There wasn’t much else to do, so she lined up another throw, was that a triple 1 or a triple twenty? Not being a believer that cheaters only cheat themselves, she was more than happy to call it a triple twenty.

She was midway through her next throw, when an alarm siren blared to life on her console. Causing her to drop the dart, which wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t been playing barefoot. Cursing to herself, she pulled the dart free and limped over to the console. Staring at the readout in disbelief, before pulling up comms.

“Base, this is lone wanderer, come in base.”

“This is base, we read you, over.”

“Understood command, now I need you to go and get the boss.”

“Boss won’t be happy about that, over.”

“Understood, you still need to get him, though. If he doesn’t wanna come, tell him, we’ve got a live one.”