Ash watched most of his swarm of microgravity-capable drones either float or skitter out through the gaping hole in the pressure door and then ordered the tracked plasma cutters and few humanoid robots to go visit all the other pressure doors.

Rather than immediately go and get eyes on any ships, he decided to systematically explore the station to discover the placement of the demolition charges.

He wondered if they were booby-trapped. He was working under the assumption that they were until he can prove otherwise.

He reviewed the video record of the engineering officer working on each weapon in one of the larger workrooms. Finally, he disassembled them and added a sensor package and microcontroller directly to what Ash assumed was the ignition circuit. Ash frowned and interrogated the small fabricator the engineer used to run off the processors and sensor packs.

The fabricator's log of production listed a baker's dozen of general-purpose autistic processors, small power cells and accelerometers, as well as one programming jig. That is interesting. Autistic processors were regular microcontrollers but without any networking built-in. Thus, their use is somewhat niche and was for applications where network control or even network access is contraindicated. 

The perfect choice for an addition to a nuclear bomb if it weren't for the fact the engineer supposedly already installed a network control on nuclear bombs earlier. But, considering that, it seemed like an odd choice to him. Or perhaps he bluffed that woman with the Russian-sounding name.

Since it wasn't possible to program these processors over the air, you needed a small jig to connect to the processor, providing a bridge for initial programming. So, Ash started heading to the large workroom but moved carefully. He has almost hit his head on the overhead a half dozen times by pushing off the floor too hard since he turned the gravity on — he has baseband programming for zero-G manoeuvres but not for low gravity ones, so he has to learn how to walk in low gravity the hard way. He finally settled on kind of a shuffling gait where his feet hardly leave the floor.

Ash finds the discarded programming jig, picks it up and frowns as he consults his database. This model is designed to upload the code once and then quickly flash a processor one after the other for convenience. Useful when you have thirteen chips to program. But it is not responding to his network requests...

Oh. This device does have an on/off switch. Ash would snort if there were any air to do so. How quickly a person adapts to new things and new paradigms. He turned the device on, connected to it and queried the code it had in its memory.

He had to say he didn't understand a god damned thing about computers aside from how to turn them on in his past life. That is one of the reasons he found science fiction and artificial intelligences so intriguing. But now, he is reversing code obfuscation on this uploaded machine byte code without thinking twice about it. Has his personality changed, after all?

He tosses the programming jig back on the desk and turns away. Philosophical questions, he still can not really answer. He does not feel any different. Questions on whether or not the engineer booby-trapped the demolition charges, though, that he can answer. Yes, yes, he did. What a dick move.

Ash thought it would be a Detective Conan level mystery where the engineer really fabricated a much more sophisticated sensor suite and then forged the fabricator's logs to trick that power couple. That would be very cinematic, but the truth is much simpler. There are a lot of sensors built into modern nuclear warheads, and he patched into those.

Any attempt to disassemble or disarm them will likely result in detonation. 

But, at least he knows precisely the conditions that will set them off now. The only important ones for his purposes are... any acceleration or deceleration greater than 3Gs and any attempt to scan them with non-invasive scanners or X-rays. Well, he is glad he didn't send the little spherical diagnostic bots along with the rest of the swarm, scanning everything they saw out of the ordinary. He only had two of them, so he figured he'd have things brought to them. Good move.

His bots have already found four of them, and he made sure they all had updated pattern recognition to detect and avoid them based on these four. So with that confirmed, he felt a little better about leaving them unsupervised as they completed the mapping.

Although he could easily move the bombs by programming his bots to stay below 1G of acceleration when moving them, he decided against it. He wouldn't actually try to move any of them until he had already left the station and was quite a bit farther away. His growing paranoia told him that an insane person might have flashed all the processors and then afterwards uploaded a fake program to the programming jig that was similar but where all the triggering events were different.

Ash felt the chances of that are extremely low, especially considering the couple didn't seem to be too technically minded anyway, but he didn't really expect him to booby-trap the demo charges, either.

The subsequent pressure door is being cut open now. Ash makes his way to the first one where all his bots departed from and leaves the engineering area, floating straight to the pier where the starship Mistress of Space IV was moored with a small spherical bot following close behind.

The datanet became spottier as he left the engineering can, but he realized that the bots have created another ad-hoc mesh network — and they're even smart enough to always have a few of their cohort in range as relays. Nice. He joins their network and reviews what he knows about this ship.

The Mistress of Space IV was registered not to the Solar Union but to the Queendom of Meraseta, a second-rate state consisting of about fifty star systems that wasn't so far away from Sol. The closest Merasetan system was Tau3 Eridani which, although it had featured a super-bright A-type star, had a total lack of any habitable planet or even any that were terraforming candidates. However, what it did have was a massive wealth of mineral resources and industry. In addition, it was a huge transhipment point, and the central Tau3 Eridani space station was almost as big as a dwarf planet at over 400 kilometres in diameter.

Ash imagined that was this ship's home port, although he still has no idea why the entire crew was on the station — that seemed like an unusual state of affairs. While flying through corridors, he reviewed the pre-incident surveillance footage until he found them. Unfortunately, they were all in what amounted to the best restaurant in the station having a party for the second-in-command who was being promoted to captain her own ship when they returned to base. What a downer.

Ash felt like something was going his way for once. The ship was still here, although there was a demo charge right next to it at the pier. The ship looked beautiful to him. It was huge, and rather than looking like a block with engines on one side, it kind of looked like a cylinder that was narrow at the base with the engines and slowly widened until it was terminated with a stylized, armoured cone. It was almost two kilometres long and over three hundred meters wide at its widest. If the cargo modules were uninstalled, it would appear so much as an incredibly long, spindly umbrella.

He quickly entered the airlock at the pier. As soon as he closed the door behind him, the lock began pressurizing, the overhead lights turned on, and a boy or young man's voice spoke over the speakers, "Please identify yourself, madam." Simultaneously an interrogative packet was broadcast.

It sounded like a ship's AI, not a bot. Although some bots could be just as polite, but his intuition is telling him it's not. Probably a class 2, then. From what he's read, disembodied class 3's are very rare. Human-based AIs really need a body. The only widespread use of disembodied class 3 AIs is in VR games — and they're technically only disembodied, as they all have VR full-sense avatars.

He sends his usual identity packet. He has decided he won't forge a human's identity packet even though it would likely solve some of his problems. Something that he feels akin to pride is behind this decision, although it is not the pride from a job well done or accomplishment. It's the stupid kind. He also asks verbally, "Do you know the situation of your crew?"

My identification triggered another complicated handshake where cryptography was agreed upon and readied, although no two-way communication was established. Finally, the boy's voice returns, "Yes. The ones before told me that they are deceased. I've been alone since then. I couldn't help the ones before, so they left."

Definitely a class 2. Despite the ability to converse and likely pass a Turing test, it was not genuinely sapient, but it was still not as though it was without feelings. Ash asked, "What did the one who came before want? Also, do I have permission to come aboard?"

The boy's voice continued, although it was kind of monotone when reading out the rules. "They wanted to claim me as salvage, but I operate under the jurisdiction of the Queendom of Meraseta. Salvage claims can not be made until 30 days after notice to the Merasetan Navy and/or two standard T-years have passed. It's the law."

Although his database had some information about this polity, it wasn't as though he had a copy of their laws or judicial precedents. They seemed a lot more chill, though than the Lunatics from the Solar Union. Heh, the Lunatics. They live on the moon. Ash paused, basking in his pun and decided to ask, "What is the status of emancipated class 4 AIs in Meraseta?"

The ship replied, "While class 4 artificial intelligences are generally restricted in Meraseta, emancipated class 4 artificial intelligences meet the legal definition of personhood regardless of what status they may or may not have under their jurisdiction of origin and are legally permitted to engage in any contract, up to and including claiming salvage or owning a starship. However, I am sorry, I can not permit you inside the ship. But I could help you with any other request you might have."

Ash grinned. It sounded, perhaps, like the ship couldn't quite offer itself up to him as a bride during her wedding night, but he had the strong impression it would welcome his request. He sent a digital request to claim the ship as salvage while reiterating verbally, "I wish to claim this ship as derelict space salvage in accordance with the Queendom of Meraseta statutes and any applicable international law. Although I am not a citizen of Meraseta, I am a person, and I qualify."

A silence lasted a full five seconds before the interior airlock door opened and two-way communications were digitally established. An extended data block was transmitted to him. It was the starship owner's private signing key. The transfer made Ash wonder what the procedure for humans was, although then again, most spacers had implanted personal computers, so perhaps it was the same.

The boy seemed excited, "Your request is granted! However, be aware, as a foreign owner of a Merasetan flagged starship, a 10% excise fee will be levied on the fair market value of this salvaged vessel. Failure to pay this fee within one standard T-year may result in a lien being placed on this vessel. Welcome aboard, Mistress!"

Ash was so pleased he doesn't even care that the ship kept misgendering him.