With the peludachi’s help, we were able to ditch my original plan of improvising a patch by scavenging bits from other ships. Instead, we got to work on swapping out the panel the way the Lady intended. Together, our pace wasn’t much behind that of a professional maintenance crew.
“Speaking of you, it’s becoming impractical to call you Peludachi all the time. Do you have a name?”
The gel cat, which was carrying something for me with the cargo drone, stopped and turned to me. A spinner appeared on its forehead, and my terminal buzzed a moment after.
A notification pointing me to a section of the manual had come from the Peludachi Companion app. I opened it to find myself staring at the front page, with yellow highlighter pointing out the “Multi-mode Auto-Learning Peludachi Unit” title.
“Well... isn’t that more like your model? In the same way I’m a person and you’re a blue cat blob, but I’m called Mark, not “Human.”
It looked at me with disdain, as if my implication that it didn’t understand names was deeply disrespectful. Heh, considering how much of its intelligence I had seen so far, it probably was.
“Fine, I guess I can make you a nickname from this... And you’re a boy, right?”
The Peludachi nodded happily. It made me wonder what a girl peludachi would look like. Would it be pink? Would it be exactly the same with a red ribbon?
We went through a few variants, but he didn’t like them. When I was about to give up and continue calling him “Peludachi,” I came up with a stupidly simple one.
“What about ‘Multidachi?’ It could be just ‘Multi’ for short.”
Multidachi made a cheerful noise. “Great,” I said, closing the book on that matter and clasping my hands together. “Let’s get back to work.”
We’d just finished wrenching open the ship’s spine, so we were all clear to slice off the broken plate. At my signal, Multi positioned the drone perpendicular to the panel’s lining, and soon the beam cutter began to trace a perfectly straight line across the alloy steel.
“You might be better at this than an actual drone, Multi...” It was fascinating that a toy-like robot like this one could perform so well at such a thing. He didn’t respond, perhaps having decided to show commitment by focusing all of his computing power.
With a CLANG noise we couldn’t really hear but I did imagine, we took out the plate and shelved it — perhaps we’d be able to melt it into something useful in the future. Can’t be wasteful in outer space. Once the metal cooled, we jammed the new plate in place and hooked up the wires before bolting the spine back together.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Great. Onto the last step, then.” I gave Multi a few pats as praise before getting back to work.
“Piru, piruri?” I think he offered to help me with soldering, but I assured him I could handle it. Besides, the drone’s arms weren’t designed to hold any tools other than the built-in soldering iron.
Carefully, I welded both the inner and outer sides of the plate in place and triple-checked that I didn’t mess it up anywhere. “Still haven’t lost it,” I said with a smirk... After all, if I messed it up the one time it was important, I might as well go back and ask my Applied Engineering professor to help me transfer to the AI Regulation major.
We gathered in the thrashed dining room to watch the metal cool off once again. And, once it was done, I brought up my terminal and pressed the button to restore power and life support. The lights came on, and Multi’s eyes quickly went from my screen to the ventilation grills. Could he actually see the gases coming out of them?
It didn’t take long before the suit let me know I could take off my helmet, and I immediately high-fived Multidachi. “We did it!” The silly little paw he formed to meet my hand was barely larger than a finger, but his commitment to it made for a hilarious exchange.
“Piru, riru!” I think he was congratulating me. It felt good to have someone to work with, and Multi’s expressions made me think that at least some portion of his neural network may have thought the same of me.
With the wiring repaired, power and life support returned to the cockpit as well. And, while the airlock for it was a bit scuffed from the pirate forcing it open, it seemed to cycle correctly. It does make an odd squeaky noise when it closes now, but I can’t be bothered to look into it.
I walked in and powered the control panel, which turned on the window-screens. The infinity of space came into view, this time from within the safety of a protective shell. The way it was meant to be seen.
“Piiiiru...” Multi made a sound of awe.
“It’s strangely breathtaking, even when we’ve been looking at it the whole day.” I agreed.
Shifting focus to the dashboard, I started looking through the menus and options. The shield and thruster failures were front and center, flashing red. But, upon dismissing them, I was able to find some useful information.
The ship’s transponder had no registration — pirates didn’t care for regulations after all — but it did inform me of a standing bounty... It must have registered that the last time it connected to the Empire’s starnet. I could only wonder if that meant the Empire knew where the ship was, but I wasn’t too versed in pirate cybersecurity.
I was able to find the model name, though.
“Pelican MX-2000” I said it out loud, and Multi made a sound much like a wolf whistle.
The Pelican was a stupid ship with a ridiculous, warship-like design despite being built to civilian standards. But after putting some work into it, I couldn’t help but feel comfortable in its cockpit, as if it was my ship. But I couldn’t get too attached to it. It was a criminal’s ship, and its bounty status could get me shot down by a Falcon Empire patrol long before I was able to claim ownership of it.
With that in mind, I found the transponder’s switch and made doubly sure that it was powered off. Then, I stood up.
“Alright. Time for phase two, Multi.”
“Piriri?” The gel cat thought our job was already done, but we still hadn’t started on the very reason I decided to fix up this ship.
