After breakfast, I donned the spacesuit I’d given to Fir last time. Etiquette would say to keep EVA suits personal, but I’d need its safety features — such as the booster system and more advanced HUD — to focus on my work properly. Nevertheless, I still planned to bring the cargo bot to help with the heavy lifting and use its powerful beam cutter.

  This type of spacesuit had an advanced enough ventilation system to prevent the smell of sweat from sticking to it. However, a silky-sweet scent lingered when I locked the helmet in place…

  “She hadn’t showered yet by the time she put it on, right? Does she just naturally smell good?” A bit embarrassed from imagining this, I made my way to the maintenance room.

  The last time I’d been here, it had been during a fight to the death. I could still see the marks on the ceiling from where I’d welded the screwdrivers to be used as a killing tool. It sent an uncomfortable shiver down my spine.

  My strategy had also required me to connect my terminal to the gravity control system on this starship. Today, I intended to do the same with the other ones: life support, faster-than-light travel, shield projection, etc. Most importantly, that last one.

  “It looks a bit different mounted on a starship, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same…” I muttered, recalling a machine I’d once worked with for a lab class in the Echelon system.

  The spherical device before me looked like the accelerator core of a Kinetic Mantle Projection shield. It was a fairly standard technology since it was cheap and easy to maintain. Put simply, this machine was responsible for routing powerful particle streams into emitters positioned around the ship. There, the streams would become wide showers, colluding into a mantle that’d completely cover the starship.

  The result was a barrier that could bend and fold to resist explosive impacts, and turn destructive laser fire into harmless vibrations. However, it could crack and shatter under the force of an extremely high-speed penetrating weapon, like the flak cannons that struck down the mercenary ship.

  “The logs are still here.” I gave myself the good news, scrolling down the shield system’s activity on my terminal’s screen. As I suspected, a missile’s payload completely vaporized one of the emitters, and the module’s software tracked it as a fatal error.

  I came here to manually disable it, since a current of shield particles trying to power a nonexistent emitter could be very dangerous. The interface notified me that it would be impossible to run the shields without that emitter, but that was within expectations.

  “I’ll find a spare one and install it if it comes to that. Without engines, we’re a sitting duck with or without shields anyway.” I returned to the hallway and exited the ship via the airlock room.

  “Hey, little guy.” The cargo drone was already waiting for me. Well, I had pressed a button to tell it to release and stand by, but I still found it quirky that it turned out to be facing my way when I exited.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I had it bring me to the front of the ship, and I entered the dining area through the same hole I had originally used to make it in. This’d be the last time it would be used as a door, though.

  To repair this type of damage, a shipyard’s engineers would typically remove the entire plate and install a replacement one made with a Forge Printer. I didn’t have access to one of those, though, so I’d have to improvise...

  "Piru!”

  “Eh?”

  The peludachi, which had seemingly hitched a ride on my suit’s booster pack, suddenly jumped off and drifted into my line of sight. Its silly noises came directly through my suit’s radio, much like that android we fought.

  “Are you alright? Here in outer space?” I spoke, figuring it would probably be able to listen to me on the radio as well. Indeed, it responded by frantically nodding... which was also quite fascinating, considering its head was practically its whole body.

  “I see... Well, I can’t really play with you right now. I’m trying to get something done.”

  The gel cat seemed quite a bit miffed by my words, but not in a “You don’t want to hang out with me so I’ll throw a tantrum!” way. Instead, it proceeded to extend its legs toward the cargo drone, making them comically long! Then, with an elastic snap, the peludachi placed itself sitting above the cargo drone’s camera module. It gave me a smug smile, but I couldn’t help but snicker: it looked as if the robot was wearing a hat, and that hat was the peludachi.

  “Huh... Alright, then. You can stay there as long as you don’t run out of battery and fall off. Fir and I would be pretty sad if that happened.”

  The peludachi that looked perfectly confident a moment ago projected a drop of sweat onto its face’s surface, and averted its eyes while keeping its feline smile. I found myself laughing at how much of a personality it had, which in turn made the peludachi look proud once more. Did it enjoy making people smile?

  I still didn’t fully trust this creature, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let it hang around while I worked. I’d be looking over my shoulder pretty frequently, though.

  “It’s a waste, but I’ll first need to cut this hole into a shape I can feasibly patch, like a rectangle. After that, I’ll go look for a chunk of hull plating large enough to...”

  I began to narrate my thought process as I worked. It was hard to focus while doing this, but having someone-… well, something to speak to did make monotonous work in outer space more fun.

  “I suppose I’ll just take the cargo drone with me and... Eh? Where did it go?”

  I turned to see the cargo drone flying away, with the peludachi still at its helm.

  “It’s piloting the drone! How does that even work?” My confusion was so great that I started to gesture it with my hands. There was nobody to answer, though. Other than the toolbox… Maybe I should draw a face on it after all– “No, where are they going?!”

  I snuck out the hole in the cockpit and looked outside. I expected to see the peludachi prancing around like a child in a park, but instead I found it methodically approaching pieces of space junk and scanning them with its eyes.

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, and before I knew it, the peludachi and the drone had returned holding a replacement hull panel that was the exact size and shape necessary to replace the broken one.

  “That’s absurd! How can you do that?”

  “>w
  “Alright, keep your secrets…” I conceded, patting the peludachi’s head “Congrats, though. You’re going to be my little assistant from now on!”

  With a happy little noise, it agreed, and we got to work.