“I still say that it's impressive as hell that you managed to put this thing together by yourself. It is not a pretty ship by any measure, but I couldn’t tell that it was made out of scrap. You did a good job with it.” Echo’s impressed look had come back after we started moving back to the landing pads and she was looking around with new eyes at the interior of the shuttle. 

I flashed her a grateful smile before focusing back on my flying. “Thanks, I appreciate that. I have put a lot of work into it over the years; still do, really. I built it for me and my needs. Took ages to get these damn manipulator arms working again, though. The cutting laser on the port side arm alone took most of a week for me to put back together with functioning bits. Two days of that was just me trying to find a focusing lens that wasn’t corroded to the point of uselessness.” I groaned at the very memory of it."

I gave a loving pat to the panel in front of me. 

“Nobody can say that this thing isn’t mine, though. Took everything I had to negotiate for the rights to the hulks I tore apart to build it. There’s still a couple things I want to do with it, but it flies for now, and I’m satisfied with that.” 

I took a moment to adjust my flight path. The hum of the engines modulated subtly as maneuvering thrusters fired. Anyone else would have missed the minute variations in the sounds from ship systems, but having been in it nearly every day for two years straight, I could identify every creak and tick that my craft made. 

Echo scoffed at my previous comment. “What could this thing be missing? About the only thing that you could possibly add would be a stardrive. But this thing is awfully small to play host to that kind of hardware. About the only ships of this size with slipspace capabilities are military ships or ridiculously expensive private shuttles.”

I simply raised an eyebrow and hummed in response. What she said was true, of course. The cargo ship I had cannibalized had indeed been a high-priority military transport. The thing was buried under a veritable mountain of other derelict ships, and the forward hull mostly destroyed by what I could only assume was the crash landing that put it in the scrapyard to begin with. 

Though I couldn’t see her face as I was focusing on my flying, I could hear the questioning disbelief in Echo’s voice. “That’s exactly it, isn’t it?” I spared a glance and a grin at her. She chuckled in response. “You really are quite the engineer.”

“Well, like I said, the old man taught me everything I know. I spent long enough with him that I could nearly build a ship from the ground up if I had to, probably. We had to do some pretty intense things on his repair ship, many of them in zero-g. 

“Heck, we had one ship that the pilot nearly broke in half trying to make the jump to lightspeed. Several of the field coils in their stardrive were way out of whack and when the field engaged, only part of the ship was properly covered. Luckily, the ship AI caught the fault and aborted the jump just before the ship became a debris field across the next ten light-seconds. Still broke structural ribs all across the hull and vented half of his cargo through hull breaches.”

I paused to complete the inversion maneuver to reorient the ship in order to match that of the station as we neared final approach.

“Now, none of that is to say that I was completely on my own doing this. There were a couple of people planet-side that I had a bit of help from in exchange for my services to them. Injector coils aren’t exactly easy to service without proper equipment, after all, and without an operational power source, cold starting a dead reactor is incredibly difficult and dangerous.” 

I sighed wistfully as memories flashed in my mind’s eye. “The first time I got this heap into the air was… Words can’t really describe all of the feelings. I felt like I was finally on my way to real freedom.” I shook my head disappointedly and waved a hand at the station we were fast approaching. 

Up close, the illusion of a pristine space port in its heyday was shattered. Bits of patched paneling, broken antennas and relays and other signs of wear and tear littered the surface of D’reth Station. 

“Look where I ended up..” I trailed off and sighed, disappointment poisoning my voice. “I hope the day comes soon that I can finally make the jump out of here. I came here to set myself up. This was never supposed to be somewhere I stayed forever, just a pit-stop on the road to freedom.”

“If you had the opportunity, where would you want to go from here?” Her tone seemed curious.

I shrugged. “Wherever the stars take me, I guess. I would like to go visit the Sol system, but I’m not sure I could stay there with all of the corps the way they are. Beyond that though? My stardrive won’t be big enough to go very far off the slipspace gate networks.”

Contacting control, I requested landing clearance at my personal hangar rather than the berth I used more often. The berth was in the salvage dock arm, and made things easy for offloading. My personal hangar was closer in to the habitation ring and held all of my project workspace. I figured that since the cat was already out of the bag in regards to the in-progress stardrive, it wouldn’t hurt for Echo to see it. Beyond that, it was a much closer walk to the promenade where most of the station’s shopping and food venues were. The fact that we stood much less of a chance of running into my boss was quite nice, too. 

Echo stayed quiet as I spoke with control. As a fellow spacer, I could easily assume that she knew quite well what was going on. 

Once I had finished getting clearances in order, Echo resumed our conversation.

“What little is left of Earth that isn’t destroyed by corporate property is still pretty incredible. A few preservation societies have sprung up to preserve some of the natural areas and historically significant sites across the globe. 

“I’ve been twice. The first time, I stayed in a hotel in the old part of a city called Athens. Apparently the place has been continuously occupied as a city for more than four thousand years. The second time I was on Earth I was in the city of Los Angeles. That place was insane for the number of people living there. Forty-five million people crammed into one city!” 

I couldn’t imagine being around there. With that many people, they must have been climbing over each other just walking down the street. The technology available on Earth was incredible, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to handle being in the veritable ocean of people such a place must be. 

“Goodness, that really is insane.” I flicked my wrist to bring up my holopad. “Hey, Vox, open up my personal garage please? I’m landing there today.” 

The AI’s voice chimed through my subdermal acoustic set, which I was glad for since that meant my guest wouldn’t hear the other end. “Of course, ma’am. Shall I queue up further episodes of ‘Estoylan Chronicles’  within your personal quarters? Published wait time from your preferred cafeteria is currently ten minutes for delivery.” 

I had to smile at my personal AI. She was the sweetest artificially intelligent assistant I could have ever asked for. 

Regretfully, despite the subdermal implant, Vox couldn't read my thoughts, so I replied aloud. “Not right now, Vox. I’ve got a guest to show around. Maybe later.”

From her position slightly behind and to my right, Echo chimed in. “Personal AI, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah, I got an instance of one that my former mentor got from… somewhere. He called it ‘Codex’. I changed a couple parameters to make mine more personable and named her Vox. She’s one of my few friends in this universe; well, as much a friend as a non-sentient AI can be.”

Echo seemed intrigued if her inflection was anything to go on. “You’re an interesting person, Soren. I’m glad I’m spending time with you.” 

I nearly sighed, but covered it with a cough. Despite the compliment, the name stuck in my ear. “Thanks, Echo. You seem pretty cool yourself.” 

I eased the Oxide through traffic and up to my workshop hangar. As requested, Vox had opened it up for us already. The magnetic clamps took hold of the undercarriage and secured the Oxide in place until the bay door was completely closed and local artificial gravity came on and atmosphere was pumped in. 

I shut down primary systems and put the reactor into a cooldown cycle. Lights in my workshop flickered on and revealed the mess that I had left the space. Bits and pieces of spare parts were littered all over and the nearly complete stardrive nacelles were mounted on a rack for easy access. On a table was the nearly person sized core that made up the navigation computer for faster than light travel. 

As I was going through my shut down checklist, Echo sat quietly. She was out quickly once the hatch opened, though. 

“Thanks for the ride.”

“Of course!” I stepped out of the scav ship just in time to see Echo stretch. The lower hem of her tank top rode up as she arched her back, grunting slightly with the effort. The sight did interesting things to my mind and I had to turn away to hide the blush I was sure was tingeing my cheeks. I made a token effort to tidy up the nearest workbench. 

“Uh, sorry for the mess. I wasn’t exactly expecting guests, but I figured this would be a better option than the scaver berths. Hope you don’t mind.” I turned back to look at the woman. She was staring right at me, a knowing smirk on her face that brought back my blush more intensely than before. This woman was going to kill me…

Luckily for my pounding heart, Echo didn’t comment on my state of being. 

“This is nothing compared to our lead engineer’s workshop, so don’t worry about it, hun. You just have some projects being worked on. I expect there to be some mess. I assume that these are the components for your stardrive?” She ran a hand along one of the nacelles.  

I nodded. “Yeah, I still need to get a couple plasma conduits patched, but otherwise they are basically ready to go. The biggest issue is this damned navigation computer.” I waved a hand at it annoyedly. “That’s the original computer out of the transport. The primary computation unit is fried and I can’t find parts for it, but any complete replacement is either way out of my price range or far too big to fit on my ship.” 

My companion seemed to take note of the mostly disassembled computer and nodded to herself. She didn’t see fit to share her thoughts, though, so I didn’t press. 

I shrugged in dismissal of the subject. “Oh well, enough of that. I promised you a tour and some food. I’m going to step into the lavatory and change into something a bit more comfortable than my flight suit and then we can get going, okay?” She gave me an affirmative answer. 

One quick and mostly painless change of clothes later, I was in a loose-fitting gray tunic and black pants, my boots pulled over top the pant hem. It was comfortable, but not overly masculine without dipping too far towards the feminine; a perfect spot for me to wear in public.

Echo gave me a quick look as I walked back out of the tiny lavatory, but again, made no comment other than to say, “After you.” 

Not seeing any further reason to delay, I tossed my carry-all on a table for later retrieval and escorted her out of the hangar and into the station.