Fir’s tears eventually ran out, and this coincided with the return of her strength. I gave her a tour of the starship, taught her how to operate the bathroom and the airlocks, and explained which ones lead directly to the void and should under no circumstance be messed with.

  She diligently listened to everything I explained, although “listening” may have not been the right word since most of our communication was via gestures and drawings. By the time we were done with this, it was already time for dinner. Before we went to sleep, Fir let me know she’d do everything she could to help me get us out of here.

  I smiled and considered praising her with some pats between those silly cat ears, but held back since it’d probably be very disrespectful. I hit the shower, put an audiobook on my terminal and before I knew it, it was dawn again.

  . . .

  Pirates are known to pilot cheap, raggedy ships — that’s why mercenaries are able to strike them down using cutting-edge stuff. However, there’s at least one piece of fancy tech that you’d always find in a pirate ship: recovery drones.

  They could also be called scavenger drones or cargo drones, depending on their main use. This one was the all-purpose type, with a beam cutter built into one of its claw-like arms, and electric propulsors strong enough to keep it hovering steadily in simulated gravity as well as move around reasonably quick in the void of space.

  I could tell its docking station had been haphazardly installed, ignoring the incompatibilities between its docking/charging station and the ports available on the ship’s airlock room. As terrible as the cable management was, I didn’t find any actual flaws with the installation, so for now I could only judge the pirates’ engineers for not including any extra fuses in the generator room.

  “Aren’t you cute?” I spoke to the drone, giving it a few pats that caused it to repeatedly readjust its equilibrium. Its single camera eye stared at me without a thought, and my mind slipped back to the silly gel cat I’d found earlier. Perhaps that robot would be more receptive of my affection.

  “Explain!” Fir said one of the few words I’d been able to teach her so far. I turned to her.

  We were floating outside the pirate ship, hooked up to the airlock’s safety cable while I set up the recovery drone. There had been a spare suit in the airlock room — which made sense, since the whole ship was designed for two people to crew it — and let her have it.

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  Much safer than this crusty model I was using, it had a set of electric propulsors with just enough charge to prevent her from drifting into the void. She had insisted on coming with me, and this was the only way I’d have the peace of mind necessary to bring her around.

  “It’s a drone.” I enunciated the word for her. She repeated after me. I’d set up her suit’s radio on the same channel as mine — as long as she didn’t mess with its settings, we’d be able to speak in the void without issues.

  With gestures, she asked me what it did. I turned to the drone and held up my terminal to demonstrate, but I suddenly did a double take. Wasn’t she terribly comfortable doing EVA for someone from a world with swords and “magic?” I’d have to ask her about this later…

  There were two main reasons I wanted to bring this drone with us — I started to showcase those to Fir.

  The first one was for its cargo space. It was about the size of a minifridge, and we could use it to bring back whatever we found out there. The second reason was that, using its propulsors, I could fly us both back and forth from the ship with ease. Even if the battery ran out and we got stranded, I’d be able to open it up and hook it up to one of the standard energy packs I carried for the laser gun and my welding torch.

  For the time being, I’d put some of my most useful tools inside it, since the pirate’s gun belt didn’t have any slots for them. Perhaps I’d be lucky to find a fully-fledged utility belt out there.

  Speaking of, I should explain what we’re doing out here.

  The main reason I hadn’t wanted to wake up Fir was that her very presence would halve the time left until I — now we— died of starvation. I’d double-checked the water recycler, so dehydration wouldn’t be a problem, but we’d certainly need to locate something else to eat.

  Several of the starships around us — particularly one that we could easily reach— looked like mercenary ones. My hope was that if we raided its cupboards we’d find some decent rations, or perhaps we’d find a whole food printer with a decent stock of nutrient paste.

  Bringing the machine over would be quite a struggle… But while the mercenary ship in question appears to be powered down, perhaps I’d be able to tear it down and rebuild it here in a few trips.

  My Practical Starship Maintenance class didn’t have as much content on food printers as it did on other, more important starship appliances. However, I was fairly confident in my ability to figure it out as I went.

  “Go?” Fir prodded me, noticing I’d been lost in thought for a minute.

  I smiled and nodded, putting my terminal away. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  I held on to a handlebar on the recovery drone — surely meant for people to transport the drone and not the other way around — and instructed Fir to do the same. I insisted twice on how important it was that she didn’t let go of it under any circumstances.

  Then, using my terminal which Fir was holding for me, I commanded the recovery drone to drive us to the mercenary ship we’d had our eyes on.

  … I say that, but I actually had to pilot it manually, and it was quite a pain to get there.