…

“—volence. Please Assist—”

…

“—eigin a-staigh an seo!”

…

“—xrtz ak’tzk, zirzk’a—”

…

“—an you hear me? Come on, kid, wa—”

…

Slowly, the world faded into view. Taking in what details I could through my currently fuzzy vision, it seemed like I was in a medbay. It was clean, at least, and the bed I was in was warm. The expected faint scent of antiseptic was there. I still felt extremely tired, but couldn’t feel much pain. There was a faint sound of a door sliding open, and footsteps crossing the floor. Someone in a white coat entered my field of view, but my vision was still too blurry to make out more than yellow skin and large eyes. I tried to say something, but only managed a hoarse wheeze, which clearly came as a shock to who I assumed was a doctor, because they recoiled in surprise. 

“K’rzackk!” They exclaimed. After swiftly checking a few instruments nearby, they hurried back out of the room.

After a few minutes, my vision was beginning to clear. Blinking wearily in the light, I could at least tell that I wasn’t in a GHU medbay, which came as a serious relief. Some tools and monitors on the walls I recognized, but some were unfamiliar. 

My anxiety wasn’t entirely abated, however. Despite what we were told of how empty it was, there were so many rumors and horror stories about the Frontier. For all I knew, I had been saved in order to be sold off somewhere, or some equally awful fate. 

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. The door slid open again, and two figures entered my vision this time. The doctor, and someone else. I could see now that the doctor was a Vespian with their distinct black and yellow carapace, but the other one I couldn’t place. They were much taller, and very broad shouldered. Twin black stripes ran down a long, furry white face. Almost Ursine, but not quite.

“Whhkgh—,” I said.

“Pleaze do not zpeaking, do not moving,” said the doctor in a high, clipped tone. “Very injured, ztill. Zorry, Ultean not good.”

My eye turned to the larger one, who leaned closer. Their voice was soft and deep, their face serious. “Do you feel any pain? Just blink once for yes, twice for no.”

I blinked twice, and they nodded. “My name is Helga, this is Dr. Skisk. I just want to let you know that you’re safe, but it’s still too early to fill you in. We’re going to wait until you’re a bit more stable, then I can get into the details. Okay?”

I blinked once, then a few more times as tears began to blur my vision again. She sounded so certain that I couldn’t help but believe her. I was safe.

“Great,” Helga said, giving me a warm smile. “Welcome to Brock Station. Try to get some more rest, we’ll have you feeling better in no time.”

Helga had been right. After a week of mostly sleep, I was able to speak without coughing too much, and I was slowly being tapered off the painkillers. According to Dr. Skisk, I had been hit by a large chunk of shrapnel when the GHU shot at the Benevolence, which punctured a lung, but missed other vital organs. A wide bandage graced my right side, where the shrapnel had been removed, and I had been given a proper eyepatch. I was impressed. The Frontier was more advanced than I had thought.  

I was also being treated for severe malnutrition. Apparently the Vander Foods E-Rations™ were little more than densely packed vitamins, sugar, and flour, with caffeine added for an extra kick. My body had basically been eating itself to stay alive. Dr. Skisk seemed like they had a serious bone to pick with Vander Foods, but it was hard to tell. They kept slipping into Vezek, their native language, whenever they started talking about it, and I was still too weak to receive what they called a ‘Intra-Lingua’, some sort of translation implant. A week later, once the doctor decided that I was well enough, Helga came to visit me again.

“Casey, was it? The GHU has been broadcasting your wanted poster all over the galaxy,” she said, taking a seat next to the hospital bed.

I nodded weakly. “Casey Black,” I rasped. “Dr. Skisk says you own this station?”

“That’s right.” She nodded. “Now, listen. I said you were safe, and that’s true. No bounty hunter is going to get you here. A day after you showed up, an Ulthean recovery squad came looking for you. Sound familiar?”

My pulse quickened. “Y-Yes. What did they do?”

Helga shrugged. “Hailed the station. They said they were looking for an Ulthean runaway. Fit your description. Bighorn Ovid, blonde hair, leg prosthetics. Said you might be missing an eye, too. I won’t ask how it happened. I can guess.”

I grimaced, remembering how the cybernetic hissed and sparked. “So you lied to them?”

“What? No,” Helga scoffed. “Ulthea doesn’t get special treatment just because they’re the biggest pirates in the galaxy. Besides, we still had your ship in dock. It was obvious we had you. I just pointed out that I happened to have the larger guns in the conversation, and invited them to leave. Seems to have worked, for now.”

There was a pause as I stared at her in surprise. I had considered the GHU to be untouchable. It was an empire whose territory took up a third of the known galaxy. I never heard of a single military defeat. The idea of an independent station standing up to them without fear was mind blowing. Then something she said finally processed in my mind.

“Wait, Benni!” I shouted, then broke into a coughing fit. Once it subsided, I said, weakly, “You still have the Benevolence?”

Helga raised an eyebrow. “Sure. It’s in pretty bad shape, though. I get that you had to, but jumping with your CDrive in that state nearly got you killed. You shorted most of your systems, and honestly, you’re lucky it didn’t rip the ship in half.”

“If you have a Flux Tech, I can take care of the rest and get it running,” I said. “I used to be a ship mechanic before, uh. Yeah. There’s gotta be somewhere to get parts, right?”

Helga just grunted in response, shaking her big head. “You aren’t taking care of anything. Firstly, you’re in no shape to perform any kind of ship repair for a good while. Secondly, that thing is basically scrap. I can’t afford to have a junker, and a GHU junker at that, taking up one of my docks. It would cost more to repair than to get a new one. Far as I’m concerned, it’s only there until I find an interested buyer.”

The thought of selling Benni made my blood boil. I took a deep breath to shout again, and fell into another coughing fit.

“Wanderer’s aching feet, girl,” Helga said. She stood to get me some water. “Would you relax? It’s just a ship. If you’re a mechanic, I could use you. You’d make enough money to get a new one in no time.”

I took the offered glass and drank the entire thing. After a few deep breaths, I calmed down a little. “It’s not just a ship. There’s an AI onboard. It saved me.”

Helga squinted. “What do you mean, the AI saved you?”

“It’s, um,” I struggled with what to say. In my experience, AI were seen as useful tools, and like pets at the very best. Unshackling them was a severe taboo in Ulthea, for obvious reasons. I figured it was the same out here. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t think of a good excuse and sighed. “I… unshackled it so that I could escape.”

That elicited a long, hard stare. “That certainly explains why we can’t get in,” Helga finally said after a minute of silence. Her usual soft tone had gone cold. “Diagnostic tools haven’t been working properly, but we can tell something in it still has power. We were just about ready to blow the doors off with explosives, but I thought I should at least see if you could get us in before we lowered the resale value.”

It was my turn to squint. “If you can’t use diagnostic tools, how could you tell the systems were shorted?”

Helga growled in response. “That was before I knew there was a damn rogue AI onboard. You realize how dangerous that is? It could do some serious damage to the station if it had half a mind to.”

“Yes! Yes, I know,” I said, shrinking back into the bed. “I didn’t have a choice! Listen, please, it’s like a person! We just wanted our freedom.”

Helga was silent again, searching my face for something. It seemed as though she found what she was looking for, because she stood with a sigh and said, “Fine. I’ll be right back, and you’re going to show me this AI.”

I nodded with relief, feeling my heartrate finally start to settle. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I’m gonna need a lot of convincing.” Helga said, before the door slid shut behind her.