I didn't remember until it was too late that I'd intended to buy an extra pillow and blanket for my workshop.
By the time I woke up for my next duty shift, the ship was buzzing because Taj had figured out how Orange Braid had managed to find Elaine even though she'd been careful. The news was not good. Orange Braid had hired a tracking service, who staked out the salon with a microcamera drone. Then they'd followed us through a hacked security feed until Orange Braid could make it up from the planet.
Being tracked by station security was one thing. They kept their surveillance to the docks and the areas close to the hull where no one could expect privacy. They also had strict protocols about data encryption and retention that were backed up by obfuscation specialist AIs who cared about their jobs a lot because they knew it was directly related to people's safety.
Being surveilled by a gray market infobroker was another thing entirely. Their main customers were pirates.
I liked that no better than anyone else aboard, so no one argued when Grace cut our port stay short a little short. We'd all had some leave. We'd taken aboard fresh consumables and supplies. Out tanks were topped off. There was nothing holding us to the lock, except for getting the port authority's permission to uncouple. Once we had that? We'd be gone.
Well, there was one other thing holding us back; the cargo bots.
Grace couldn't, in good conscience, pull out of port until we knew that the new bots were worth their upkeep. That meant I needed to integrate them into my little army as soon as possible.
Brando had the bots out of the packaging by the time I made it down to the Cargo bay; four Mercer Robotics TitanMule SI VX8s. They had vaugely humanoid tops with four arms set atop caterpillar treads.
"They've got a smaller footprint than I thought they would," Brando commented as I caught up.
"They'll fold up even smaller once we're underway," I told him. "I picked out ones that can even clip to the walls and ceiling if we run out of floor space. They have magnetic locks so they won't go crashing around if we lose gravity."
"I was worried about that," he admitted. "None of the little guys seem to."
"They do, but the maglocks are hidden in their main bodies. They're meant to report to their cubbies in the event of gravity loss. They'll cling to a surface and use their legs or servos to kick off in the direction they want to go. They can hold onto the same bars and handholds we use to navigate gravity loss. The Mules, though, will roll around the walls and use their arms to secure any free-floating cargo. You won't have to instruct them. They know what to do when stuff starts floating around without permission. The SI in their product code stands for 'semi-independent.'" I patted one on the side. "A Mule will run forever. There's a reason they dominate the second hand market."
I turned to the Mules, who were waiting patiently. My two auxiliaries assigned to the cargo hold had successfully remote connected to them and were running their preflight protocols and boot up sequences. I wasn't here for that, I needed to do the physical inspection.
Mules were so reliable that sometimes unscrupulous vendors would pass old stock off as new. I had an image in my feed of the latest VX8s that was, coincidentally, very similar to the old VX6s—which had been recalled for a flaw in their charging ports that could turn them into enormous paperweights without warning. Recalls were difficult to handle for the Solar Diaspora unless you were in the Core Worlds where the big cargo tractors operated. They could afford to make returning bad stock accessible to small vendors. This far away from Sol, some merchants were stuck with defective stock unless they could get rid of it at a loss—or get a sucker to take it off their hands.
The difference between a VX6 and a VX8 was subtle without taking it apart; there was a panel in the power housing that had ferroceramic lining in the VX8. That VX6 only used nanovinyl lining in its internal components.
I sighed in disappoint when I discovered that two out of the three bots had nanovinyl lining on the power housings.
"How bad is it?" Brando asked, popping a squat next to me with his arms crossed over his chest.
"I would just fix it with aftermarket parts if we hadn't just paid full price for these," I said as I dusted my hands off. When I stood up, I was eye level with Brando and he was still squatting. Rude.
I queried Grace in the feed and he appeared at the lock within a few minutes with an expression of dismay.
"No, really?" he asked plaintively.
I nodded and he pinched his sinus. "At least two of them are good. We can station one in each hold and they can at least take the pressure off Brando."
Brando had spent the time it took Grace to join us in thought. He turned to me. "Can we get them to refund the difference in cost and get that aftermarket part?"
I thought about it. "It depends how scary your purchasing agent is. I've forwarded the documentation and photos to Grace."
Grace nodded. "If you're alright with that then I'll get our agent on the feed. Sin, tell me what parts you need and I'll see if there's any on station now."
He dismissed us to go eat since it was mid-shift and I went to go peel Elaine out of the ponics shop. We hadn't talked since the night before and I wanted to check on her, after that announcement about Orange Hair.
I found her elbow deep in one of the reservoirs. Shipboard hydroponics were a contained 'ebb and flow' system, which meant that only the top of the grow table was exposed to the air in order to limit how much water could escape during a gravity loss.
If a lot of shipboard systems seem planned around the loss of gravity, that's on purpose. It's the greatest point of mechanical failure possible when you're under way. The only thing that spacers have more anxiety about is fire and air quality.
"Hi there," I called out from the entrance.
Elaine looked up with an air stone in one hand and smile. "Hi, yourself. One sec? I need to connect this to the pump. We're about to have a salad bar again."
I looked over the healthy lettuce plants in the grow table. They'd been bare little nubs when I first came aboard. We'd been supplementing our ration trays with microgreens and sprouts, which already seemed like luxury to me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had an actual salad. I'd heard that Grace had stocked us up on dressing in preparation for this.
"Don't let me stop you," I chuckled. "I came to get you for lunch."
"Already?" Elaine looked at her band. "Already! Did you get a chance to look at the new cargo bots?"
My expression must have told the story because her face fell.
"No, really?"
I nodded. "The vendor swapped in some recalled units. If they can't replace them and they're willing to refund some of our credits, Brando wants me to try and fix them. I can do that once we're underway. It shouldn't hold us up for much longer."
Elaine pursed her lips. "I hope not. My skin's been crawling since I heard what Piotr did."
"How are you feeling?" I asked. "He put hands on you last night."
She gave me a wry smile. "I feel better when I remember you kicking him in the chest. He looked like a startled Aye Aye when he went down. You really took the wind out of him."
I could have done a lot worse, but I was glad she felt safe.
She finished installing her air stone into the circulator and sealed up the reservoir. "There we go! Let's eat!"