SWWAE Chapter 12: I Won't Call It Junk

“In a way, you’re Heather’s inheritor, so what do you want to do with her body?” Vestan asked while awkwardly trying not to get too close while looking around the nose of Stargazer.

“I don’t know what her customs around how to treat a corpse, but one of her last wishes was to go home, so I want to take her home. Preferably on Stargazer. I feel like that’s the only fitting way of getting her home.” She wasn’t about to deny a person’s last wish, and it truly was her last wish. At least one of them. In her 26 rotations, she managed to brave listening to the rest of Heather’s final chronicle. It had in no way been pleasant, and she had had a few breakdowns because of it, but she needed to know if Heather had left wishes for once she was found.

“How do you know that?”

“The gizmo wasn’t drained by the sphere because it wasn’t attached to the ship, so she was able to make a final captain’s chronicle, as the gizmo calls it. It lasted until after she died. I don’t know how I managed to get through listening to it, but I did, albeit with a hefty need of my self-heal.”

Though Vestan wasn’t facing her, she could see his shoulders slump at the mention of needing self-heal. “I don’t know if I could brave that cet… What were her other wishes?”

“Get the sphere off of the ship and figure out a way to destroy it, make sure that her rock collection was displayed somewhere where people can appreciate it but never let them touch it (which I’ve already fucked up but only because I didn’t think about the fact that the bedroom was pressurized when the hall wasn’t and then had to clean it up), find the grave of a person called Prest Iron-brow Gabsin the third and piss on it, and put her to rest next to her mom if her mom had past by the time she was found.”

“That’s certainly a list. Don’t know about pissing on someone’s grave though.”

“Never done it before and can’t really relieve myself anymore, but I’ll figure something out. Luckily, I found a list of how Heather had her rocks organized, but I’ve been in zero g this whole time and wasn’t confident about being able to make sure they stayed where they were supposed to.”

“That’s a start.” He turned back to her. “What do you want to do, though?”

“What do you mean? I want to do my best to honor her last wishes.”

“I mean after that.”

There was a long pause before she answered. “I… I don’t know. I want to fix and upgrade myself. I want a body that feels as close to organic as I can get. When I dig further through the sphere, I can hopefully find my books that I was writing and then finish them. I want to learn about this universe before I really figure out what I want to do.” She surprised herself. “That actually sounds like a good list to start off with.” Then she remembered something she had thought to herself on her very first rotation. “I also want to explore old, forgotten places. Especially ancients’ ruins since I am one.”

Vestan nodded in thought as he walked back over to her. “Fixing her sounds like the best place to start. I don’t know about upgrading though.”

“Why not?” Had technology not advanced enough to make an upgrade worth it?

“This ship is historic, Kiddo. It feels like a disservice to space travel to do anything other than restore her to her original state.” He reached out and gently touched one of the walls. “This is the find of a lifetime; you don’t want to just go altering it.”

There was a slightly warm fuzzy feeling that filled her at being called Kiddo by him, but it was quickly outmatched by the upset of someone telling her what she should do with her own body. “It’s not just a ship though, Vestan. This is my literal body.”

He winced a little and looked upset with himself. “Giff, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about it like that. You’re right, this is your body, not just some old ship.” He took a deep breath and looked around. “That being said, I feel like it would be a disservice to upgrade you to anything other than the same class you were in back then.”

It was very heartwarming to hear him change his tune so fast at the realization that Stargazer was her. What did he mean by class though? “And that class would be?”

“The pioneer of exploration. Fast, agile, powerful, hard hitter, durable as all hells, and, of course, the best-looking ship on the market.”

“I would very much like to be all of those things.” Excitement grew inside her.

The excitement must have shown in her voice because Vestan gave a smile, but it faded a little very quickly. “The only problem is that it’s going to be really expensive.”

That made sense and brought her mood down a little. “Heather should have left some money lying around. Unless it’s all digital and not something I have access to.” There was the possibility that whatever money Heather had would be very valuable now, but there was also a chance that with inflation it might not be worth anything.

“I don’t know what hard currency she would have had, but it might not even circulate in her native anymore. Might hold some value for collectors. ”

“Native?”

“Native system.”

“Oh, fuck, there isn’t a standard galactic currency, is there?” That wasn’t necessarily going to be a problem since so much as it was going to be an annoyance. If her goal in this life was to explore, then she was going to have to deal with currency exchange.

“Well, yes, but actually no[1]. Most places have a form of currency that they might share with a handful of neighboring systems. The Scavian Alliance has screds, but that’s all digital. It’s really only used for large-scale business and interstellar transactions. Most places don’t accept screds, but every system has at least a few Alliance exchange posts, because they have very well regulated currency exchange services.”

“Screds means Scavian Credits, right?” Vestan nodded. “I don’t suppose they’ve been around long enough for Heather to have had an account with them?” He shook his head. “Great… Now I’m poor again. Wait, why did you make it sound like digital currency was a bad thing?”

“About a thousand or so vols ago there was a bit of an attempted automaton uprising. Didn’t last long since they could all be shut down with the paradox, but they did a lot of damage before people realized what was going on. One thing they did was delete all the digital currency and any record of it. Now, most people don’t use any currency that isn’t hard.”

She sighed. “So that’s why people don’t like automatons. That’s not going to make life easy…”

“Sorry, kid. A lot of regulations around automatons have been dropped by now, but most people still don’t like them.”

“If I had a body that looked organic, maybe that would help.” The look on Vestan’s face told her it might not. “What’s the issue with that?”

“A body like that would be far more expensive than it would be to upgrade your ship body to the top of its class. There are also a lot of legal things surrounding organic-looking automatons. You’ll need endless permits and character references from the alliance.”

Taking a deep breathe she thought for a moment before speaking. “If I build one myself?”

“Illegal without proper permits, and potentially more expensive and time consuming.”

“Shit… Is the alliance the governing body of the galaxy?”

Vestan lifted his hand and tilted it from side to side. “It’s more like an entity made by the agreements of independent governments of the current connected societies on how to interact and set regulations and laws on a galactic society level. Also, the main exploration force of the current collective societies.”

“So a mix between Star Wars and Star Trek.” He looked at her confused. “References to space fairing media from my simulation.” This was all good to learn, but she had a feeling all this was going to really hold back her plan to a degree. “I don’t suppose there are opposing societies to the alliance?”

“A few, but the most notable is the Yechun. They’re in a slowly expanding war against the alliance.” She didn’t like the sound of that. “Their tech is far more advanced than ours, and we’re pretty outmatched on every front. Luckily, they don’t push the borders too often, but anything in the open zone is fair game. The problem is there’s no agreement on what the open zone is, and they think most lifeforms are below them. They consider themselves successors to the ancients.

“So Covenant[2], great.” She sighed, and then a thought came to her. One of the screens on the wall pulled up a map of the galaxy, or at least what it looked like back in Heather’s day. “You wouldn’t be able to point out the borders for me? Or where we currently are?” She asked, pointing to the map. With a few gestures, Vestan marked out the current borders on the map and then pointed to where they were. “Well, I don’t know if I’ll be going back to Heather’s ruin anytime soon.”

“Why not?”

“It’s in the open zone. Closer to Yechun space than Alliance.” She pointed to where she had been, a very noticeable distance away from where they were now.

“That can’t be right,” he said with disbelief in his voice. “That trip would have taken you longer than you’ve been alive.”

“It took Eternity all of two minutes.”

“Drak… That’s fast, even for a god. How in the hells didn’t you burn up at those speeds?”

She shrugged. “To be fair, I was brought here by an ancients’ Goddess. I don’t think she would have if she couldn’t keep me safe during the travel.”

He nodded, still staring at where she had been. “I feel bad saying that where you came from is a lost cause, but…”

“Before I consider any thoughts of returning or not, I need to get myself up to date.” Those words weren’t entirely true. She already knew that her goal was to go back there because she didn’t want the Yechun to find it before she did. If they haven’t already. “For that I need money, and I don’t know how to get it.”

“You’d be lucky if anyone would pay what they think is an automaton for work.”

“Gods damn it.”

Without hesitation, Vestan said, “You can work for me, Kiddo, but I don’t even make enough only employing myself to pay for the upgrades you need. At least not anytime soon, or without having to build the stuff from scratch, which would still be expensive as all hells.”

He called her kiddo again, and this time she didn’t have annoyance fighting that warm fuzzy feeling. “Any work is better than no work. Are you a junker? I think my commandeering and repair skills could be pretty handy.”

Narrowing his eyes at her. “Rule number one of working with me; never call it junk. This is a vintage acquisitions, repair, and retrofit operation.”

If only she could narrow her eyes at him. Playfully of course. “You buy and scavenge old broken down ships and parts that aren’t in service anymore and use them to repair stuff people couldn’t afford to fix at some bigwig corp that would charge them more than it would take to buy a new one from said corp.”

“Don’t call it junk, Kid.”

“I won’t call it junk, Vestan.”

His eyes finally softened. “Call me Gramps.”

That warm, fuzzy feeling came back. “Does everyone call you Gramps?”

“No. Most youngins that I know all call me Uncle Vestan.”

She felt a little confused. “Then why do you want me to call you Gramps?”

“Everyone needs a grandpa, Kiddo. I’m not gonna let you go out into this crazy galaxy all on your own with no family to fall back on when you need us.”

It was a good thing she didn’t have tear ducts because she would have flooded the ship. “Okay, Gramps.”

[1] Meme that’s actually a misquote from So You Want To Be A Pirate short film

[2] Halo series

[Sorry this is a couple minutes late, but it's here! What do you guys think about her new gramps? And there were some references in this chapter, though one that wasn't from her which was something I thought was a little fun.]