I landed in the hold with a gentle exhale as I looked behind me.

  Hehe! The pirate freighter that I had destroyed had been a gold mine. Even if most of the components on the ship were trashed, some things had survived.

  The glowing Medium Iris Drive the Crabbit were hauling in behind me was exactly what I had hoped to find in the wreck.

  “That’s a good find.” Hammond offered from deeper in the hold, although the large man seemed uncomfortable in the open hold.

  “It is! This is worth more than the last few deliveries I did. It’s great!” I cheered as I watched the Crabbits set it down and secure it. “Anything from Sin?” I asked, using the name the former pirate had asked me to use.

  Hammond looked irritated at the name, but didn’t argue. “She says she has the stash coordinates. We can head there when you’re ready.”

  “Awesome. Yeah I think I got most of the value out of the wreck. Let’s get everyone back on board and head out.” The pirates had an asteroid out in the middle of this nebula soup that they were dropping off all their loot at until they could sell it off to pirate traders.

  Funnily enough there was an actual market for trader ships that brought pirate loot and then jumped it a few sectors away to sell it off.

  Damn pirates. I shook that off and flicked my Tab. “Alright girls, gather up whatever is left, we’re heading out.”

  I winced a bit as my Comm suddenly exploded with positive responses and just waited out the Crabbits energy.

  “They’re… Exuberant.” Hammond offered as he watched the pair that had moved the Iris Drive float up to the main ship, both chattering away with each other happily about their adventure… Despite both of them being together the whole time.

  Silly girls.

  “Yeah. It bothers Sin. Does it bother you?”

  “A little.” He offered instantly. “I never worked alongside AI before. Never seen a ship that wasn’t real top brass that even used them.”

  “Most military ships have drones I thought?”

  “Drones sure.” He offered back before shaking it off and turning back to face me. “But you’re the Captain.”

  “I am, the Crabbits aren’t going anywhere. That… It won’t be an issue, will it?” I asked firmly, just so there were no misunderstandings. I wasn’t about to subject the Crabbits to social issues like that. They were still young.

  “I’ll live.” He offered back and I hesitated.

  “If you want to leave even after I get Sin’s name cleared. That’s fine… It’ll be annoying, because you’ve proven you're useful, but I don’t want a crew that doesn't want to be here.”

  “I forget how young you are.” He offered, and before I could even start to feel offended he continued. “It’s fine. They haven’t done anything that freaks me out. Just something I’ll get used to.”

  “Could always set one of the girls as your partner.”

  “I’ll pass.” He said simply, and I chuckled, because that might entirely be his choice, if one of them grew attached to him, that would pretty much be that.

  I turned away staring out into the nebula as I waited for my girls to come back. As I did I unzipped my suit. And pulled my arms free.

  While I was comfortable going pretty bare in space, the nebula meant it was just safer to be completely covered.

  Finally the last few girls came floating in with chunks of scrap, or parts, and I closed the Hold.

  I hurried back up the ladder once again promising myself to get the damn elevator working sometime soon, before climbing more ladders to the bridge.

  Could just zero G up the ladder, but the exercise was good for you, and I’d keep that for special occasions. Like when I surfed my chair up to the bridge.

  I chuckled a bit at the thought as I climbed up to the bridge. It only took a few steps to realize there was a problem.

  “Yay!”

  “Good job!”

  “Tricksy math! Good good!”

  Sin didn’t look happy, covering her head as she lay face down on the EW console that had been hers on her former ship.

  “Sin?”

  “Oh thank the Hole. Please help.” She jerked up and then ducked as the Crabbits continued to float above her in a circle and congratulate her.

  Ah. They were trying to be positive with her. Usually they didn’t just keep going like that. I watched for a minute as they continued to congratulate her, before I realized I really did need to intervene.

  “Alright girls! Thank you for being nice to Sin, but she has some work to do, why don’t you give us some space.” I called out as I walked over, and the Crabbits broke off to float around me. I could see their little faces on their Tab screens shift from positive shouting, to sad as they flew around.

  “She’s sad.”

  “So sad.”

  “Cheering didn’t work Captain.”

  “Yeah… Kat, help!”

  “Okay I’ll take care of it. Good job. You didn’t do anything wrong.” I told them, and their screens shifted to happier smiles as they floated off.

  “Didn’t do anything wrong?” Sin whispered at me as I approached, and I had to stop and take a breath before I snapped at her.

  “They’re trying to make friends. You acting scared of them, is just confusing them. Sorry. If they bother you, you can just tell them to give you a little space.”

  “Sure, I’ll let the AI know that I don’t like it. I’m sure that’ll go well for me, when they decide they don’t want to be controlled.”

  “They’re harmless… Well they’re good girls.” I corrected. They were certainly not harmless. Especially not once I started giving them some better upgrades.

  I still remembered holding the broken girls in the ship after the shield failed. Remembered the way my hands kept shaking, and how-

  “Anyway.” I interrupted. “You got the stash location?”

  “Sure it wasn’t hard since you brought over the nav console.” She flicked her Tab and I checked the data. That wasn’t far. Good.

  I really wanted to get the hell back to UNK-L, hopefully meeting the Crabbits I’d sent off as a prize crew, and hopefully all of them would be put together and not exploded or something.

  “Great, let’s go see what the pirates have collected… Or I guess I should just ask?”

  “I’ve been there, but we weren’t allowed in so to speak.” Sin explained with a shrug. I noticed she was messing with the mess of consoles and systems I’d installed setting things up to work better together I thought.

  Or at least more comfortable for her.

  “Then I guess it’ll be a surprise.” I said as I settled into my chair to input the navigation data. Hmm. We were pretty far from the stash. It was on the entirely opposite side of the nebula. I started working on a path to it, my Navigation Crabbit helping out. She was getting pretty good at it actually.

  Then when the path was plotted, and started up the engines and sped away from the wreck of the pirate ship.

  I slipped through the nebula much faster than I had when sneaking up on this area. The pirates had a really high quality map of all the rocks and junk in it, so the new path let me really kick the engines up without worry.

  It didn’t take long at all, to break free from the gas into one of the long tunnels through the nebula formed from constant travel.

  “So, how long did you do the pirate stuff around the nebula here?”

  “Years. It’s a good spot. The gas causes sensor disruption, and even distress signals don’t get far. That and the gas is worth a nice stack of creds.” Sin actually answered after a while to my surprise. I hadn’t expected a real response.

  Sin had been… Quiet since she came on board. She didn’t like talking to me much.

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  “Wouldn’t that be pretty obvious, selling the gas?”

  “No, there are a lot of minor harvesters all over the place. Sure the big consortiums extract more in an hour than most of the little harvesters do in a month, but they only sell with restrictions. The little harvesters sell to smaller businesses, or private markets.”

  “Seems like a lot for just some gas.”

  “The rumor is it has something to do with lasers.” She offered back idly, and then made a happy noise, as she looked over her set up. “There we go.”

  “Something happen?”

  “Just finally got this all working again. It’s a pain in the ass to get all this junk synced up. Your comm setup isn’t going to be able to handle all of this by the way. If you want me to be able to attack and defend, I’ll need something a bit more heated.”

  I nodded absently, focused on the view. The tunnel I was in ended, into one of the massive openings in the center of the nebula where the massive harvesters were gathering.

  “I’ll see what I can do, should have some stuff from the salvage. Girls add a comm system upgrade to my to do list.” I asked.

  “Yes yes! Added! Priority level?” The Crabbit on my shoulder asked, and I shrugged.

  “Put it pretty high.”

  “Added!”

  I ignored Sin’s shudder at the reminder my Crabbits existed. She’d get over it. Or not.

  “So this noble you know. You really think he’ll give me a pass?”

  “Yeah.” I offered simply, but I realized for me this was just a frustrating situation where I had to deal with someone I didn’t like, for Sin it was her life. “I’ve worked with him before, and… We fought pirates together funnily enough. I saved his ship, he saved my home station… I also built some stuff for him. He’s been trying to get me to work for him.”

  “Really? A noble wants you to work for him? And you’re still independent?”

  “Thankfully yes.”

  “Thankful? Why wouldn’t you want to work with a Noble? That’s the cushiest job in the sector.” She asked, and I tore my eyes away from the screen for a moment to look at her.

  She had turned in her chair to look at me, her red hair wild and almost feral looking gave her a sinister look, which was definitely purposeful, but her face was all confusion.

  “Because I made the Phantom Star, so I could be free.”

  “Free huh? Wait, made? What do you mean made?”

  “I didn’t say that yet? The Phantom Star, I made her from scratch. Top to bottom.” I offered before turning to look back where I was going, focusing on actually piloting.

  “What the fuck? How the hell’d you do that?”

  “I made an AI drone swarm.” I said a bit dryly, maybe even a bit cruelly, since she was bothered by them.

  “I… Yeah I guess that’d do it.” She said turning back around and that was the end of that conversation.

  —--

  “That’s kinda cool.” The stash ended up being an old ship smashed into the side of an asteroid.

  “So that’s what it is. I always wondered, considering he would use the airlock to hand off the goods.” Sin muttered and I looked at her and frowned.

  “Well I’m not sure that’s a great idea. Girls, let's get as good a scan of that airlock as we can please. I’m worried about traps.”

  “Eh, the Captai-I mean, Barbatos wasn’t that good with tech.”

  “Gonna be careful anyways.” I offered, as I brought the Phantom as close as I felt safe to the floating asteroid and broken ancient ship. “Girls I want a dozen or so of you to float over and check everything out. Be careful.”

  “Oooh!”

  “I wanna go!”

  “No me!” The bridge crew started chattering but I shook my head.

  “You all have jobs to do, so you have to stay.” I offered, but then I could hear the arguments going through the whole ship, as every Crabbit wanted to go out and explore. “Figure out who's going, or I’ll pick.”

  “Aww.”

  “Okay.”

  I settled in as the Crabbits went out through the hold in a line of dozens of them to land on top of the broken old ship. Some sort of long haul freighter? It was old for sure. Maybe a colony ship? Those could be weird since they would have come from before the Duchy even had its own style of ship.

  Also colonists would have come from a higher tech sector. I wonder if there was anything interesting leftover?

  The thought left an urge in me to head over myself, but I stayed put. Let the Crabbits check it out. Their sensors were good, and they were getting better at hide and seek.

  Heh. I hadn’t really planned for Hide and Seek to be training for boarding actions, but it had its benefits.

  “Captain Captain! There’s something on the airlock, yep! See?” My Tactical Crabbit called out, as they were obviously sharing sight with the Crabbits that had floated over to the ship.

  I looked at my Tab that changed to a slightly fuzzy vision of what the Crabbits were looking at. Stupid nebula disrupting signals.

  “That’s not a bomb.” I said confidently, looking it over, it looked more like-

  “That’s what he wanted that for?” Sin asked suddenly, as she had walked over to look.

  “You know it?”

  “I built it. It’s just a screamer. Basically a distress signal. It sends a specific message back to the Huskarl.”

  “Well I guess that’s safer than a bomb. Do you know a way to disable it?”

  “Yeah, here.” She grabbed her Tab and a few moments later some simple instructions were flicked over. The Crabbits got to work and the device was disabled with just a few wires snipped.

  “That was easy.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be like a bomb or something.”

  “Well that’s one thing, but I’m not confident yet. Keep scanning and double check everything girls.” I ordered and got a happy wave from the optics we had been looking through before they continued on.

  —--

  We finally linked up after triple checking everything, the Crabbits had even slipped inside to look around, without finding anything dangerous.

  Sin and I were standing behind Hammond as the airlock cycled and then opened.

  “Forcefields up.” He demanded and flipped on his own as he took a step on board.

  There was no atmosphere, and no gravity working. But while he started floating looking around I just followed him at a normal pace, my Crabbit giving me some Gravity.

  I once more looked at Hammond as I walked sort of up to him with a quirked eyebrow, and a moment later another Crabbit came up as I waved for them and he slowly lowered to the ground with Gravity.

  *Forgot about that.* He muttered a bit grumpily and I just smiled happily before focusing once more on the ship around me.

  It was ruined. Hanging cables, and panels hanging from the wall. It looked terrible, this was definitely a wreck.

  *Crabbits, have you found anything?* I asked, looking towards my shoulder Crabbit.

  *No, not yet. They’re beating us in hide in seek… We’ll win though!* She assured me, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  *It’s okay, just keep an eye out for anything out of place. Sin, you coming?* I called out over the comms. The woman was standing at the entrance.

  *I guess.* She responded back after a moment, hesitantly. It made me a bit suspicious for a moment, before I realized it was because the Crabbit hovering around her, helping her with the gravity situation.

  She really was a scaredy cat when it came to my girls.

  Hopefully some time will help her get more comfortable with them.

  We started exploring, and thankfully, it didn’t take long for us to find what we had come for.

  Inside the hold of the ancient spacecraft were crates all stacked up, and obviously newer than the ship around it.

  *Bingo.* I couldn’t help but state as the door opened and we walked inside. This was a lot.

  *What?* Sin asked, looking at me funny.

  *Nothing, don’t worry about it. Let’s see what we got.* I walked over to the first crate and hit the electronic release pad, and it released, the front opening revealing… *Aww man what’s this junk?*

  “Trion Gas. It’s the stuff they harvest out of the nebula. Why did he bother keeping this?” She asked and I didn’t have an answer either. I went to the next crate. And thankfully this one was full of something more useful.

  Weapons.

  “Huh.” I muttered pulling out a blaster rifle. I’d never seen the design, but as I pulled one free and started looking it over, I picked up pretty quickly it wasn’t the highest quality.

  “Blasters?”

  “Seems so. You recognize these?”

  “Sorry, not a gun gal.” She offered and I had noticed she didn’t even have a blaster or weapon on her hips even now.

  “You didn’t carry as a Pirate?”

  “Oh I do. Got a nice pair of blasters when I need to show off or defend myself, but I’m not a soldier, and… Well I’m new to your crew. Figured I’d go without for a bit.”

  I took that in. Huh, she was actually surprisingly careful.

  “We’ll talk about that later. Girls! Let’s get all of these moved over to the Phantom! Check them first, make sure none are dangerous or bombs or something, but I want everything we can grab.”

  “We’ll get them Captain!” Shouted the Crabbits over comms as they started floating into the hold in a rush.

  “C’mon. Let’s finish checking the rest of the ship.” I told Sin, who nodded, we both headed out of the hold up the stairs leading to the next floor and I opened my Comm. *Hammond, we’ve found the loot, while the Crabbits grab everything We’re going to keep looking around. Find anything?*

  *The captains quarters. This ship’s a few hundred years old if what I’m seeing is right.*

  *Yeah, I noticed that. Sin you want to come with me? I want to pull the computer data if I can.*

  *Sure.*

  —--

  I watched as space turned into confetti, as we dropped into subspace. Finally on our way to catch up with my girls.

  I hope they were okay, I hope they weren’t scared.

  Shaking it off, I hit the gas and we took off towards our destination, navigation was set, and the Crabbits monitoring things I stood up and stretched.

  It was quiet up on the bridge, the girls up here were mostly just idling sharing their resources with their sisters causing trouble.

  I slipped down the ladder and into the mess hall my drink canister pulled out and stuck into the drink mixer for a moment to refill.

  “You really just have all this stuff open to use huh?” Sin asked, from where she had a plate of recently cooked food in her hands.

  “Yeah. I just think it’s weird that people can’t eat when they’re hungry.”

  “It’s a good way to have some idiot eat all your food.” She pointed after chewing, and pointing her fork at me. I looked her over. Her red spikey hair was cool. She looked like the kinda woman that became a pirate.

  It was kinda cool. Also annoying. I wish I had cool anime protagonist spikedhair.

  I could probably alter it, if I really wanted? I ran a hand through my blonde hair but ended up just shaking it off. I would look weird with red hair.

  “I think if an idiot eats all my food, then I’m the idiot for hiring them in the first place, and they won’t be on my ship much longer regardless.”

  “Heh. I guess that’s fair. You’re not a pirate, and you’re not military, so it’s easier for you.”

  “How’s the room? Need anything?”

  “Bit empty, but the bunk’s comfortable.”

  “Well if you need anything let me know. I still need to pick up a nice table for in here.” I mumbled looking at the big empty space. I had wanted a wood one, but should I just make one out of nanopaste?

  “So, let’s say everything goes smoothly. You clear my name, and I stick around… What jobs exactly are we doing? Pirate hunting?”

  “Sometimes.” I agreed instantly, locking eyes with her own. Her reddish eyes shifted away purposefully not matching my own. “I was doing some transport jobs before I met your Grandfather. Then I jumped into the pirate hunt. But I do all sorts. That going to be a problem?”

  “What? Hunting pirates? Pfft, pirates hunt themselves all the time. Just curious.” She mentioned, and I nodded.

  “It’ll take some adjusting, we’ll figure it out.” I said confidently as I turned to make myself something to eat too.

  Better to eat now, so I can get some work done during the trip. It was going to be about five days to get back to UNK-L.