At a certain point in my life, you’d think that I’d get used to things being stressful.

Oh, hello again. I didn’t see you there. I was busy complaining.

Honestly, I think that I might complain a little too much. On balance, I’ve got it pretty good. Warm place to sleep, air that isn’t toxic or irradiated - air in general, really, which is mostly an orbital problem - steady food, job security. Well. Security job.

A lot of people on the surface don’t have what I have.

I can send a basic vacuum operations drone shell out to the asteroid belt, grab something that looks like it’s maybe within a sixty ton limit, haul it back, feed it into my foundry, wait a few days for material processing to occur without melting my entire home, then order a manufactory to turn it into structural panels and a few bits and bobs, and set a construction gantry to assemble those pieces into a whole new deck of the station that I can nap in. This will take some time, but, functionally, only a few button presses. I mean, I’ll have to do some loping to get around to the places to press the buttons. And I’ll have to explain why I’m making a new crew level when I already have my pick of roughly three hundred and six decent nap spots already. To myself. And probably also Ennos.

On the surface, if someone wanted a place to sleep, they’re going to need to first make sure they’re not in a region that’s toxified in some way. Then they’ll need to gather materials, either by hand or rough tools, or with one of the few golden age artifacts still out there. Then, assemble those, by hand again, while fending off attempts to eat you from local wildlife, attempts to harvest your organs from local fleshmongers, and attempts to wire you into an eigensphere by local art collective AI systems. And yes, I’m leaving out a few things here.

Then you need to sleep, hopefully somewhat secured, and hope none of those problems migrate to you. Or that no one steals your stuff. Or that you’ll have enough energy when you wake up to go through a similar process just to get food.

It’s lonely on the surface. Settlements are impermanent things. And for all that I’m keeping the world from ending, sometimes I don’t know if I’m keeping it together very well.

It’s lonely up here too. Less, now, though. So there’s another thing I can’t complain about. I can’t even complain about the food being awful anymore. My dwarf wheat is coming in, so I can even have *bread* soon for the first time in my entire life.

Ennos keeps telling me that the foods I’m eating are ‘bad for me’. I know they mean well, which is why I am politely ignoring all those words.

The long suffering point I was going for here was that I probably ought to get used to being frustrated by new situations.

Old situations, I can cope with. Biting into undifferentiated ration mass is… unpleasant. But at least once I’ve done it around one hundred and eighty thousand times, I get used to it. Targeting surface threats is a screaming terror of panic that I hit the wrong target, misfired a weapon, or even just that intercept fire or mild atmospheric turbulence would send a shell careening off course. But the accidents and failures never undo the good of the successful hits, and I *know* that, in my tiny cat heart.

New situations are kind of different. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be disappointed or worried or confused at any given time.

RIght now I’m going for all three. Probably leaning toward the last two? It’s a toss up.

I should probably just do my best human interpretation, sit back, kick my paws up, and enjoy the feeling of novelty. I get, honestly, kind of a lot of novelty in my life, compared to how long it’s been. But that doesn’t mean I should squander the feeling.

The people on the other end of the communications link are saying something again. I should probably stop mewling to myself like an impudent kitten and actually pay attention.

Oh. I’ve been making calls today.

I’ve known for a while that I’m not really alone up here. Though no one else has anywhere near the capabilities I have. The orbitals are cluttered, scattered, out of touch with each other, and just barely scraping by. And honestly, I don’t have a lot of ways to help them.

I try, in the same way I try to help the surface, to shoot down anything that threatens a larger number of lives. But the station’s scanner capabilities have been… well, they’re not as good as I thought they were, and they’ve been crumbling ever since I took that plasma ejector shot to one of the upper decks.

Upper? Or is it lower now?

Station orientation is driving me insane.

“Yes, Lily.” Ennos cuts into my mental space. “*That’s* what’s driving you insane.” The AI brings me back to paying attention, casually telling me “Please pay attention. The translation database is mostly ready now.”

Right. I’ve been making calls today. Saying hi to the neighbors I know about. I am… I don’t know. I am less afraid now, than I was before. I’m not actually alone. I’ve been hesitant to talk to anyone, just because it would eat up a lot of my time while voiceless to do the word by word paw typing. And also because if anyone does approach the station, what am I supposed to do? Let them in? Maybe give up my command here? Or… what? I don’t like the options.

But I’m trying now. Partially because tools beg to be used, and I have a voice.

There are four people on the screen I’m looking at. And I know they can see me, through the high res lens of at least one of the drones arrayed around me. Three of those people are talking amongst themselves, and I’ve been letting them, letting Ennos and Glitter compile a usable addition to the translation database.

“It’s a joke.” One of them is saying, as Ennos starts to autotranslate the words for me. “Look at it.”

“It’s what she said it was!” Says another one, waving a gun around like an asshole. “Why is it just looking at us?”

“It called *us*.” Says the last one. “So if it’s a joke, it’s a bad one.”

“Mmmmpgh!” Yells the woman who accidentally contacted me some weeks ago. She’s the fourth person; looking a lot the worse for wear, tied up with insulated wire and gagged, left in a kneeling position on the floor while the other three argue.

Ennos doesn’t translate that last yell. I bet they *could* though. I consider asking about it, but I’m kind of annoyed that this experiment in socialization is rapidly going downhill.

The four people on the screen are all roughly human. Heavily augmented with some pretty overt cybernetics; which tends to mean those cybernetics are rough and uncomfortable. I am almost certain I could fabricate better ones, but the problem with these things is the initial physical trauma to the body, so whether I can help their people is up in the air.

Also the guns and prisoner thing is putting me off.

“Ennos, start translating for me please.” I meow out, and the AI hums an affirmative. On screen, the trio flinch as I start talking, Goon One’s hand tightening on their gun as I speak. “Hello.” I say. “My name is Lily Ad-Alice. I’d appreciate it if-“

“It speaks!” One of them yells.

“It knows our words!” Says another.

“She led it right to us!” The last one plants a thick mag booted foot on the back of the kneeling woman. “This is her fault!”

I am rapidly losing patience. At first I was trying to personally interpret their mutated French/Californian spacer slang language. But now, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be talking to these people again.

“Yes. Sort of.” I say. “I’m not going to attack you or anything. I just wanted to say hello, because you seemed kind of afr-“ Again, I don’t get to finish my sentence. I’m really not used to being cut off. To the point that I kind of check out of the conversation when Goon Two does it. I’m not really listening to him, I’m sort of over here in my own head, trying to figure out if I should just tell them I don’t care and hang up.

I half pay attention to Ennos’ translation of their rambling while I think about dinner. The galley has been working on some kind of bean chili using the very first pepper that’s sprouted. I say ‘working on’, and that’s kind of weird, right? It’s supposed to be an automated unit capable of feeding a few hundred people an hour. But I guess it’s taking its time here.

Glitter informs me that chili is supposed to have meat in it. And that’s probably true. But the station has ridiculously complex locks from a dozen different sources on all the medical tissue cloning facilities, so I can’t just grow some cow muscle and throw it in there. I also don’t care that much. I’ll eat my mildly spicy bean paste and I’ll like it.

My attention cuts back to the conversation when one of them mentions killing someone.

“-it’ll leave us alone!” Goon Two is yelling.

“Who cares if it’ll leave us alone? Space her anyway, this is her fault. She broke the code.” Goon One says as the woman between them thrashes against her bonds.

Okay, kind of done with this. The city on one of Uranus’ moons was really friendly when I talked to them earlier. The stealthed generation ship that never left orbit was also really polite, if kind of standoffish. Whoever is living on the primary moon didn’t answer, or maybe didn’t get the signal through all the rock, but there was a listening post on the original moon that I had a good conversation with before they promised to get me in touch with a government representative. Government representatives! In space!

None of my surface communications really made it through the jamming, and I didn’t have the extra materials just to send down relay drones again. But I’ll get there eventually. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone too far away up here, at too high power, lest I wake up more monsters. But, again… one paw at a time, right?

We’re all here together. And everyone seemed equal parts shocked and happy to see me.

Except these dumbasses.

“Enough!” I bark, cutting off their conversation. “No killing anyone! Void, what are you, kittens?!”

They startle, and stare at the screen, before one of them looks back to another. “I think it’s mad at us…” they say.

“Yeah. But what do we do? She broke the code.” Goon Two replies in a quiet voice.

Goon One makes a full body bobbing motion, which Ennos whispers to me is analogous to a nod. “Yup. Gotta go out the airlock.”

“Shouldn’ta talked to an outsider.” Goon Two shakes their head.

Are you kidding me.

She hadn’t been afraid because I owned the only functional battle-ready space station, she’d been afraid because of one of their stupid cultural quirks about talking to other people?

I was almost offended.

Also, I may have just blown her trial by chiming in here, because before now, arguing that I was a cat and therefore not ‘people’ might have been a valid legal defense.

“Okay.” I say, letting Ennos decide whether taking the edge off my voice was a good idea. “You aren’t allowed to talk to me. But you know I’m here, and you can talk to each other.” I don’t voice my opinion that this is an idiotic cultural loophole; the kind that tends to form after hundreds of years of survival under certain terms leaves descendants complacent and ignorant of the original meaning of rules. Or at least, I don’t mean to. Ennos filters it out, judging by their aggregated muttering. “So you’re okay with literal interpretations. And you say, because she talked to me, she needs to go out an airlock.”

Goon One looked over at Goon Two. “It’s listening to us pretty well. Does that count?” Goon Two just shrugged.

“Alright.” I said with a hiss, looking away from the tactical command AR I’d been glancing at. “This is no longer a conversation. This is a threat. You will wait eight minutes before sending her to her doom. You will make sure she is capable of surviving at least five minutes in hard vacuum. You will not injure her in this process, and you will damn well take those bindings off.” I pause. “If you do not, then you should know that you are *not* hidden from me, and I *am* better armed that you can even begin to imagine. I *will* begin demolishing your home around you. You know where I am. You know I am not joking. Do you understand me?”

Goon Three had fled the room by this point. Goon One was staring at the screen, looking like he was *about* to nod, but being held back by some stupid cultural hangup about communicating with outsiders. Slowly, he turned to Goon Two.

“Go get her a spacesuit.” He said.

I cut the communication feed. This isn’t my mistake, but I’m fixing it anyway. Thousands of years to learn and people are still killing each other for the stupidest reasons imaginable. There’s a bitter taste on my tongue as I start stalking through the hallways of my station, and the lingering thought in my mind that maybe I should just stop trying to help, if this is how everyone is going to act.

The thought doesn’t last. I know what I am, and what I should be. I’ve always known, since the first thing I remember my mom saying to me.

I’m here to help. Even them.

“Jom!” I call over the local comms. “Retrieval mission! High priority, coordinates on the tac-web. Make sure your interior is secure, you’re picking someone up!”

I feel bad for the poor woman.

She’s going to need to get used to ration. Because I will not be sharing my chili today. And I really hope being furious at humans improves flavor, or I’m going to get even angrier.