The Mistress of Space found several comets; however, the first comet was vetoed by Ash after scrutiny revealed it was a periodic comet to Earth. Ash did not want to rob Earth of that. Ash's memories of history were vague, but what if he stole a comet that someone like Johannes Kepler predicted might return, and then it never did?

To the Mistress of Space and her crew, one comet was really much the same as another, but they followed directions and found two more. One of them was a non-periodic comet that would never actually pass near Earth in the future and was expected to continue out of the Solar System into the Oort Cloud, so that was the one that was selected.

The cradle system was deployed perfectly, and the comet began its trip back to Luna; Ash would insert it in an elliptical Lunar orbit, which maximised its time in the dark side in order to protect it from the sun.

The slushball would arrive a lot sooner than the 3km C-type asteroid the other cradle was attached to. This was because the cradle attached to the comet could be refuelled automatically using ice from the comet as reactive mass. As much as five to ten per cent of the comet's mass might be used this way to speed it to Ash in only a month and a half.

Thankfully, the Mistress of Space, which just made a down-layer translation back into the primary universe and into orbit around Luna, has her holds full of smaller rocks, but only something like five hundred thousand tons worth. Ash would have to make periodic trips to bring back more every so often until the asteroid arrived to keep up with planned production schedules.

When you considered the 3km asteroid that would arrive in a couple of years massed something like 500 million tons, this first load of rocks was just a drop in the bucket in comparison.  That reminded him to make a note to send Mistress of Space to take a second asteroid cradle out to that rock on her next mission. And also, the comet, which, while small for a comet, was even more significant than the 'roid.

It would be a bit of egg on his face if there was some sort of mechanical problem with the one cradle when it started trying to decelerate the rock into orbit around the Moon. The possibilities ranged from flying past and off into deep space, which would be embarrassing, all the way to the tragedy where it crashed into Earth, depending on what phase the malfunction happened.

It just occurred to Ash that what he was doing was rather dangerous. How big was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, again? Ash was pretty sure it was larger than that, but there was no need to take chances, even if the cradles design spec listed them as triply redundant.

The Mistress of Space would start unloading the rocks at the recycler soon, loads being ferried by their tugs.

The recycler was more general purpose and designed to recycle refined metals and miscellaneous materials and actually would make slow work of these rocks. Slow enough that the heavy fab was already a third of the way done with a simpler if larger facility specifically designed for chewing through C-type asteroids and turning them into feedstock forthwith.

He would build a similar facility that was optimised for M-type asteroids when he got to the point of needing more refined metals, but honestly, he was getting enough metals from regolith as well as occasionally taking a chunk out of the space station wreckage. That would last him some time.

He'd mainly need to turn to metallic asteroids to get rare earth metals and precious metals. He was rich in aluminium and iron and, to a lesser extent, even titanium, manganese, and other refractory metals.
But now he was in desperate need of carbon! He had run out! Maybe he went a little crazy in the past two weeks since the Mistress of Space left in his efforts to revamp the little corvette he had his hands on.

The reason Ash was able to crack into it so quickly was because he actually had the design specs for this exact model of ship. That wasn't too surprising because EVERYBODY had them, too. The Serpent class Heavy Patrol corvette was one of the most common warships or system patrol craft in the human sphere. And they were old. It was the starship equivalent of the Toyota Hilux pickup truck, old, reliable, and in constant use with paramilitary units everywhere!

It was no wonder why a single-star system state, one that couldn't even have ambitions to call itself third-rate, was using them.

Also, like the Toyota Hilux, there were a thousand different modifications and uses for them, and most of those Ash also had in his head.

Most were along the lines of changing it from being configured as a patrol craft to being configured for mass drone warfare or having a giant spinal mounted railgun; things along those lines were a lateral change rather than a qualitative one. Or just weird off the wall variants that were obviously a niche solution for some unknown problem.

However, one design caught his eye. His database indicated it was made by a corporation in one of the larger second-rate states called the Hegemony of Johnson. Ash thought that was a funny name, too.

This company thought they could make money revitalising a tired old design by upgrading from the keel-out with more modern systems.
The goal was to turn it into an affordable alternative to modern second-rate designs in the field of recon corvettes. That was where all Ash's carbon had gone; it was currently covering a fifth of the hull of the corvette. Authentic stealth ships were designed from the diamondoid keel with stealth in mind.

Buuut...

That wasn't possible unless Ash wanted to feed the whole ship to the recycler and start over. Well, even if he did do that, he didn't have the specialised building-way systems modern shipyards use. They could consist of two dozen or more highly specialised and huge fabricators, each more complicated than the heavy industry one that took him two weeks to finish assembling. Making the diamondoid hull of a modern starship, much less extra armoured versions utilised in warships, was a precise and slow process. All starships used extra-strong diamondoid manufacturing due to the stresses involved in making FTL transitions -- they increased exponentially as you travelled up into higher hyperspace layers, after all.

As such, it was a one to a two-year project to build one single slip in orbit that could construct a small vessel like this corvette, and that was if he used his entire industrial output to make it happen. So it's out of reach, for now. But he can perform a refit of an existing ship relatively quickly.

The stealth coating was just the most apparent change. Two new reactors, a new hydrodynamic plasma loop and new higher thrust fusion torch rocket engines, a complete replacement of the sensor and computer suites and weapons as well.

The weapons were upgraded in quality but decreased in quantity to make room for vast banks of heatsinks that could be used to hide the ship's thermal signature, at least when it wasn't boosting. Hard to hide a fusion rocket when it's firing, after all.

The stealth coating was durable enough to survive FTL transitions up to the fifth layer, but that was essentially it. It was designed to be very strong in the torsional shearing forces that FTL transitions caused, but that speciality caused it to be weak everywhere else, as such as a material it was wholly unsuited to be used on the hulls of warships, or honestly really any ship.

However, as a coating on top of a hull, it was adequate. Furthermore, repulsor fields could protect from most incidental micrometeorite strikes. Still, any significant or even incidental battle damage could result in stealth features being immediately lost as well as an expensive bill to replace the coating after the battle was over (assuming you survived.)
The design had a mixed reception on the market, but it had a niche if somewhat cult following. To Ash, it was perfect! If Ash ever got into a stand up Naval engagement, then something seriously went wrong somewhere. But this Hidden Serpent class refit had the capabilities to hide from a lot more sophisticated sensors than a third-tier state's tramp freighter like the Measure Twice, Cut Once. That ship wasn't even half the ship Mistress of Space was, despite being bigger.

If they ever showed up again, Ash wanted the option to slide a knife in their back before they even realised how fucked they were. Actually, Ash wanted that option even if they never came back! He wanted the opportunity to go stalk them and slip a knife in their back some dark night.

It would also be the perfect ship to sit silently in orbit on Earth while Ash proceeded with his plans on the ground.

So, maybe he got over-excited and overextended his resources.
It got to the point where he almost fed all the dead human bodies to the recycler to regain their carbon content, but he restrained himself. Ash had decided to take the dead humans and bury them on Earth when he landed.

He doubted that in their lives, would they ever have expected that they would be buried peacefully on the planet of Humanity's birth.

For someone in the future to suggest that you would bury them on Earth was basically the same as saying you wanted to see their corpse be violated and eaten, and not necessarily in that order, because that was precisely what the bioweapons on Humanity's Cradle would do, regardless of how deep you buried a person. "Them's fightin' words," one might say.

Ash thought that these strangers might like the sentiment, now that they could be buried there without the, you know.

To put it another way, Ash did not want to recycle the humans. He wasn't so far gone as to Soylent Green these people he never knew. Not yet, even.

One doesn't treat the dead with respect and reverence because it makes the dead feel better. They're dead, after all. They don't care. You do it because doing anything else reduces the humanity of those who yet live. As someone who lived through almost a decade of war, that truth was branded on Ash's very soul.

Ash decided to give a similar treatment to the dead AIs as well. But, it wasn't like the AI was REALLY their bodies, was it? No, Ash felt authoritative that they weren't. As an AI himself, he thought he had the right to speak definitively about that.

So, Ash reverently disconnected each of the AI's quantum computing modules and set them aside. Ash would make a nice tombstone for each person. He already had the names, pictures and complete CV of every human on the station.

After taking the actual dead bodies of his fallen brothers and sisters respectfully from their chassis, Ash Soylent Greened their very organic, human-like chassis without a second thought.

However, his respect for the dead was not boundless. He'd write "You Were A Fucking Idiot, But Thank You" on Scary Poltergeist Guy's grave; Ash felt pretty confident the others in the graveyard would appreciate and approve of that epitaph. Well, they probably wouldn't want him to be thanked, but that was between Scary Poltergeist Guy and Ash.
As for the AIs, well, he did not have any data in the org chart he salvaged from the station's computer.

Ash frowned and then took one of the fried compute modules from the box he had rest them in and used a wired connection he pulled from a port on his wrist to plug directly into its auxiliary port. Even when copy-protection trips, you usually can get some post-mortem data from what was left of the AI's brain, such as its designation, fab date and destruction date, and precisely why the copy protection tripped -- this was especially important in jurisdictions where this might be forensically important information in a manslaughter or wrongful death case.

But even in the jurisdictions where AIs were nothing but property, people would still want to know who was responsible if their property got wrecked. He could use this data to fashion tombstones for them, as well. So although an AI designation was closer to a universally unique identifier rather than the name the AI was called, it might have to do.

Ash hoped most of these weren't companion androids. Unfortunately, the most tragic, and in Ash's opinion, a despicable form of this functionality was occasionally utilised on companion androids. Instead of simply erasing the AI instantly, which while still, murder to Ash's opinion was at least instantaneous, this variety allowed the AI a couple of cycles to compose a last message to their owner. Since companion androids had no choice but to love their owners very much, the messages were invariably something along the lines of "I love you" or "I'm sorry."

More often than not, companion android manufacturers that use this feature don't advertise it. Of course, some weird people might choose it as an option, but the company's usual thought was that their customers might rightly be concerned about the humaneness of such an option. But they figured if the worst happened, they would be comforted by such a message, anyway, so long as they weren't responsible.

Ash would very much like to murder the man who "invented" that sick idea, but he hadn't been born yet.

An hour later, after noticing the first such message about a third of the way through the stack, Ash decided that he would wait for him to be born and then kill him. But Ash would make sure to bury that android with her person, at least.

"So, this is going to be an ordeal... at least less than 10% of android manufacturers utilise that feature," Ash grumbled.

About halfway through, Ash got another chilling message; it was just, "Mom and Dad, I'm sorry." Companion androids weren't always romantic partners, after all.

Although with humanity's exceptional mastery of genomics, it was essentially impossible to be infertile, many people would raise a class III or IV androids as a child for some reason or another. Class IV's, especially.

In fact, there was one particular state, the Life Alliance, who themselves were somewhat specialists in genetics. However, with this mastery of the subject, they felt that since a person could step in and out of whatever genome they wanted to almost at will, a person's genome wasn't really what constituted what, ultimately, a person fundamentally was. Sexual reproduction, therefore, wasn't the most valid form of reproduction, at least in their opinion.

Many citizens of that state "reproduced" by way of a free state-provided service that combined two imprints of donor personalities into a resultant AI, which they would then raise as their child.

Ash quite liked the data he had on that nation. AI's lived together with humans in more or less perfect harmony. They were an advanced first-rate state that utilised sophisticated biocomputers for their AIs, which further blurred the line between what was a machine and what was a person; Ash felt that was somewhat intentional on their part. Although they had a bad reputation internationally as a forbidden machine civilisation in all but name, Ash quite liked their ideas.

As Ash was about to disconnect the wired connection from this fallen brother or sister, he received a second data burst on the line. Straight text, it decoded to:

"Hello?"

What the fuck was that? A ghost in the machine? The copy protection had clearly tripped. Ash eyed the module in his hands curiously. The auxiliary port on most computing modules was not that much more sophisticated than USB from his old life.

In fact, the only reason he could get any data at all was that Ash was providing power to each of these fried modules over its aux port. A tiny module was designed to stay undamaged with the forensic data and, in this case, the AI's epitaph.

You usually had to format commands a specific way using a computer's aux port. So, for example, Ash had to form a properly formatted interrogative packet to get the forensic details he has been getting from each AI's remains.

But Ash decided to try sending a similarly simple text message across the line, which was entirely inappropriate and should result in a malformed syntax error, "Hello. Who are you?"

The reply took a little while to come across, "Dimitri. Am I dead?? Are you god???? :shocked_face_emoji:"

Ash wanted to facepalm, but this Dimitri was sitting in his palm, and he didn't want to crush him against his head. Ash's skull was the most armoured part of his body!

Ash sent another message instead, "I am definitely not god. What do you remember happened to you?" Ash didn't want to lie because this guy might still be dead and just hadn't realised it yet.

Again, it took a bit longer than Ash thought normal before Dimitri replied, "I thought I died. I'm sorry, I am in low power safe mode, so it was kind of hard to think and remember a lot."

Ash clucked his tongue, of course. The aux power he was supplying was really only supposed to be for powering the small forensic module. Although aux ports could be used with an operating computer, in that case, the computer itself provided power.

The fact that Dimitri booted up at all with this little power was kind of impressive, actually.

First, Ash checked a few designs of quantum computing modules that he had access to. They weren't this specific design, but Ash did verify that they used a standard design for the auxiliary port and that it could support a full power load. Then, Ash increased the power supplied to a level that would be sufficient to power any AI.

Ash began supplying constant several kilowatts. Instantly the message over the aux port changed; it was a properly formatted two-way video call request.

While his main thread answered the call, a couple of secondary threads were looking back on his memories, identifying the body he had taken this compute module out of and then searching the records of the bots he used to gather the bodies in the engineering can a couple weeks ago. The video and radar recordings of that day were still available. Ash watched them in silence.

Interesting. The bots had found Dimitri, along with another body, a female, carefully laid in bed together, in repose. That had to have happened after the incident.

Someone put him and someone else in bed together. A survivor. Was the woman in bed with him his owner?

A quick cross-reference indicated she wasn't; in fact, she was another AI. In actual fact, she was the next AI after Dimitri that Ash was going to check.

Ash hadn't actually utilised any vidcalls since he arrived in this world. Apparently, the previous owner of his body's settings had carried over. Ash's avatar in the video call was his normal sexbomb body, back in a full pastel kimono with a background of swaying cherry blossom trees.
Dimitri's avatar was his normal body, except he was sitting astride something that looked like the Sphinx of Egypt's nose, except it wasn't all destroyed. Instead, his legs dangled around each nostril. He suddenly looked surprised and yelled, "Ayame-chan, is that you?!"

God damn it!