In the end, the storage bay had too many things for us to carry in a single trip, so I returned to the pirate ship with Fir and unloaded the first batch into its storage room, which had much more space. That batch included the contents of the fridge and that figure I saw on the shelf module, which Fir insisted I bring with me.

  “I mean, it’s probably expensive, so I guess it’s a waste to leave it there” I sighed as I unloaded it. My room was a plain and bare-basics module, so I placed it in one of the drawers, where it’d hopefully be safe until I could find a magnetic dock to place it on.

  Space-facing airlocks couldn’t be forcibly opened from the outside — which was why Falcon Empire patrols on rescue missions would often just tear into the hull as I’d done with the mercenary ship. However, once I opened them on both ships, I was able to operate the cargo drone to carefully recover everything of use from the mercenary ship.

  Despite the cargo drone’s help, moving stuff around took most of the day including a quick SpaceCakes lunch break. By the time I was done, I decided to sit down and run an inventory of all the things I was able to bring back to our storage bay.

  1 - The most important was an industrial food container with about 500 meals inside it. They came in sturdy packaging meant to withstand space travel, so it was rather heavy, around half a ton. It would keep us fed for the next 2-3 months, which took a huge weight off my shoulders. It did bother me that there was a surprising amount of SpaceCakes inside, though.

  2 - Then there was that robot maid’s monospear. It was a nigh-unbreakable polearm with a mono-molecular edge, sustained by a swarm of nanomachines inhabiting its special sheath. We found said sheath floating around the cargo bay, still operational thanks to a standard energy pack.

  This type of fancy melee weapon was something you’d only ever see in the hands of high-ranking imperial soldiers or nobles, so how exactly the maid bot had access to one became another mystery for me. I asked Fir if she’d like to use it — since it felt like a waste to just leave it there— but she responded by hugging her new HF-blade, for which we’d also found a sheath and a compatible belt.

  3 - Unfortunately, the mercenary ship was not equipped with a food printer, but at least we got our hands on a microwave oven we could use to heat up those few hundred meals. It had been securely docked beside the table in the living space compartment, so I had to manually uninstall it before the cargo bot could take it away.

  4 - Lastly, we found about four hundred rounds of autocannon ammo and sixteen seeking missiles. We didn’t have any use for these right now, but I felt like I’d regret it if I was ever able to restore this starship and found myself without ammo to operate the guns in a pinch.

  This was all hypothetical, though: this ship didn’t even have missile pods, so I’d have to take the ones from the mercenary ship. Anyways, that amount of firepower should be sufficient for 2-3 gunfights, given that I was able to prepare and pilot a ship well enough to win.

  “I do have that game on my terminal.” I never bothered to give it a try, but it might just teach me the basics of space dogfighting if I can hook it up to use the Pelican’s cockpit as a peripheral.

  That’s assuming I can get the cockpit to work again at some point, though. As for the cargo we had from before, that included the cryosleep pod in which I found Fir, my toolbox, the pirate’s laser gun, a few weeks’ worth of SpaceCakes, a few useless toys like an exercise ball, a redundant “accessory” and…

  “Oh right. The silly cat thing.” I turned to the charging dock where I’d left it and found Fir playing with the blue gel creature. Had it woken up on its own? Since its ‘power button’ consisted of giving it a few pats, perhaps she’d turned it on unintentionally.

  I walked over since I was also curious, but first I saved the list from earlier on my terminal. It’d be useful to keep track of these things until I could operate the ship’s cockpit and have its systems automatically track the storage bay’s contents for me.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Mark! Cute!” She showed me the blue gel cat, putting her hands together for it to sit. It was indeed fully awake now: its round silly eyes were drawn fully open along with a big feline smile. It made a cute, vaguely cat-like noise and its cartoon mouth was animated opening and closing accordingly.

  Such ridiculous technology. I wonder if there’s a tiny holo-projector inside it, and it reflects the pictures onto a special coating on its “skin.”

  It took some valor to pet an alien-looking creature like this one, but I’d already done it earlier and it seemed to appreciate it. Indeed, it responded with happy noises when I rubbed its head. Or rather, its whole body was its head…

  “So, what are you, little guy?” I was fully expecting it to understand even less language than Fir, but its eyes showed me that it had completely understood my question. Its gel displaced to form two stubby round hands (or front legs?), which it put upwards as if asking for something.

  We placed it atop a container as Fir and I tried to guess what it wanted. Our second-to-last guess was a SpaceCake, but it turned out it wanted my terminal. Hoping it wouldn’t do something dangerous like eating it, I gently placed it onto its silly little hands.

  “Click!” The near-field communication sound effect played from my terminal, and the UI for a software install appeared. I tapped the button to authorize it, and the “Peludachi Companion” app was added to the program list.

  “Is that what you are? A peludachi?” I asked, and the blue cat-thing hopped in place, waving its tiny hands around for a moment before allowing them to recombine with its blob-like body.

  “Peludachi?” Fir repeated the name, and I nodded. She said it again with a baby voice and the creature answered with some happy cat noises. I smiled and sat on the container to browse the app.

  The main screen had a dashboard with a status breakdown, including the peludachi’s battery level and self-diagnostic results. I found it strange that its battery was only at roughly 2% despite charging for so long... did it need a specialized charger? I navigated to the help section.

  It was surprisingly handy, with searchable sections which were automatically parsed by my terminal’s built-in AI assistant. I was becoming increasingly curious about how exactly it even stored energy — could there just be a solid core in the center of it with all the important parts?

  Trying to find a detailed spec sheet, I found myself at the end of the help section. There, I found a manual file that appeared to have been half-heartedly glued onto a corner of the interface. Matching that impression, tapping it caused the file to download into my terminal separately, and I opened it with my default document reader app.

  INTERNAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

  A warning at the very start made it clear I wasn’t supposed to see this. But that was a mistake on the makers’ part, not on me. And this only fueled my curiosity: where else would I find this thing’s blueprints, if not in a confidential development compendium like this one?

  “Mark?” Fir, who’d been playing with the peludachi for a minute, took an interest in what I was doing.

  Holding up the terminal, I answered “Study.” This was one of the words I’d taught her while trying to summarize my background into stick drawings.

  Fir nodded and tilted her heard, asking “Peludachi?” She must have wanted to know more.

  However, I could only shrug. I hadn’t read much yet.

  So I tried to skim the document, but… it was huge. There were almost a thousand pages covered with flowcharts, blueprints, design reference sheets, and to my surprise, chemical breakdowns of nanomachine designs illustrated from multiple points of view.

  “Ridiculous...” I’d thought from the start that the gel cat was high-tech, but if it was entirely composed of nanomachines — and if those machines could do even just the 2-3 things I read by skimming it — this robot was so advanced it bordered on the realm of fantasy.

  ... Well, probably not. Perhaps my frame of reference is just based on civilian technology after all. If I finish my studies and land a job at a weapons company, I might find myself making some crazy weapons for Falcon Empire ships, like self-replicating nanomachine grenades or FTL-capable railguns.

  Still, why would that level of technology be built into what looks to be a cute little pet? I turned to the peludachi with suspicion. I kind of wanted to warn Fir to stay away from it, but if it truly were scheming something, would it have sent me its full development brief? Still, I couldn’t underestimate how smart it was — it could just be programmed to behave like a silly creature while plotting to eat us in our sleep.

  “Sigh... I’ll make sure it sleeps in the storage bay.” I made a compromise for the time being, as the day was almost over and there was no way I’d finish studying this manual before going to bed.

  It’s pronounced P-eh-loo-duh-chee. “Chee” like in “cheese.” That’d be “Pelu-” from plushie in Spanish, and “-dachi” from ‘friend’ in Japanese.

  Expect merchandise someday. Not because I'm greedy (although I am), but because I want one myself.