There's something about the noises on a human ship; they're so different from a Tunlak trade skimmer or a Glint cruiser.

The noises are the same; the machinery is easily understood. Even the layout of the ships is often similar. Yet, each human ship seems to have its own song. A song of beeps, hums and hisses. There are tales of captains calling a dead stop simply because their vessel didn't sound right or engineers that found a supposedly untraceable fault in a glass battery by listening to it. Every human ship of a certain age seems to collect these legends after a time.

Now some humans do have exceptional hearing and probably could tell the state of their ship from how it sounded. There is a different source that may reveal more. Humans have always referred to their ships as individual entities. Called them by female pronouns, a practice that is ancient and laced with superstition. Yet there may be something there. Many cultures have tales of sentient blades or tools that help the hero in their journey or push forward the story.

Now, there has never been any research on if an inanimate object could ever be sentient, or for that matter aware. Yes, there are species that have vastly different biological processes, but a species that are first machined then tooled by others, then slowly gain sentience by proximity and use of other beings? Such a concept is improbable, inconceivable at best and pure fantasy to any reasonable mind.

Still, there is a plethora of anecdotal evidence pointing to something being odd about human ships. Be it this ship song or the ships themselves. What follows are two such anecdotal stories. First an interview with an engineer that served with their military, the second is from an old female human named Sophia Tiller.

———Interview #15———

"This is Gwuogh Chirryp interviewing android Jim Buttersworth on the topic of starship sonic resonances. Beginning now," spoke a black-feathered avian, "Mr. Buttersworth please tell the recorder your story and any relevant data, starting with the earliest relevant."

"All business aren't you? I suppose you are a scientist of some sort, not sure what data superstition will give but that's your choice," replied Jim, his navy blue chassis reclined across from Gwuogh on a soft chair, "I suppose it started on the third vessel I served on, the Harvest Moon. She was three quarters through her service life and already developing the quirks an old ship gets."

Jim looked up at the ceiling wistfully, then continued, "That was when I finally started to really earn my chops as an engineer. Starting to fix problems before they happen and anticipate future ones. I remember being able to tell if the mass to energy generation was down a percentage of efficiency by the whine it made. It all seemed to form a chorus of noises to me as I did my maintenance rounds."

He paused, then smiled as if he saw an old friend, "I can still remember the order of my rounds. First the chimes of the batteries, the ionization making the glass tinkle ever so lightly. Then the hiss of the water recycle, the woosh of the air conditioner. Oh I can still hear them now."

Gwuogh coughed then asked, "The Harvest Moon isn't the ship you informed us that you had the experience on, is the one you told us earlier in error?"

"No, but you need context before I get to that ship. I loved the Harvest Moon, I served with her till she was decommissioned and I'm not ashamed to say I mourned her," Jim said that with a firm conviction in his voice, making eye contact Gwuogh directly as he said it, "The next ship is when it happened."

Mr.Buttersworth paused here as if trying to think of a polite way to rebuke someone, "The Red Wednesday was wrong from the moment I set foot on it. Everything sounded like chaos, no harmony like the Harvest Moon. It's batteries sounded like they were constantly shattering, the water and air recyclers were like a suffocating man and the mass to energy generation was a whimpering dog starved and expecting a beating. All of that in a new top of the line cruiser."

He sighed deeply. The chassis speakers even whined slightly as they tried to reach the out-of-breath quality lungs would have had, "I tore that ship apart three times during my service, looking for the problems I kept hearing. It took me three years to figure it out."

"Figure out what Mr.Buttersworth?" asked Gwuogh.

"The Red Wednesday was fine. It wasn't wrong or broken, it was just new," Mr.Buttersworth continued as he drew in a non-existent breath, "I had grown so used to the Harvest Moon, I learned to think that all ships would sound like her. It wasn't the sounds that had changed but me."

"Once I realized that, it seemed like Red Wednesday stopped practicing and actually started to sing for me." finished Jim Buttersworth.

———End of Interview #15——

Mr.Butterworth's testimony paints a vivid picture, but it doesn't give a clear indication of the phenomenon. It could simply be a psychological quirk with him. The noises explained by the higher fidelity of his android chassis. It does give a good indication of the skill some human engineers can achieve though.

The second interview with Sophi Tiller is more fantastical, in it what she implied. It does come closer to the core of the study than interview fifteen.

———Interview #23———

A large ruby-shelled Tunlak spoke, "Hello Sophia, I'm Alk'rona, a Tunlak queen. Thank you for coming to meet me at my burrow."

"Oh bless, Ah'm honored you wanted to hear a story from little ole me," responded the elderly tanned human, "It's not everyday I get to talk about my Tim, well Ah suppose Ah do get asked about him often. Ah don't often get to talk about him, if you know what Ah mean."

"I'm glad to hear about him in that case. Was he there when the incident we inquired about happened?" Alk'rona held a tablet in her forward appendages, poised to start taking notes.

"Yes, he warned me that the ship sounded off," she responded as she brushed some of her grey hair to the side of her head.

"Please start a bit sooner, did he often mention how the ship sounded to him?"

Sophia paused as she thought, then spoke, "Not exactly like that, but he always told me that when Ah played my songs the ship liked to sing with me."

She paused, a brief moment of emotion rolled across her face then she continued, "It was our first ship, used and barely even a pinnace in size. We had bought it for our retirement trip, named it Fond Farewells. Every night we would sing together. Tim would swear up and down it resonated and harmonized with our voices."

"It was wonderful while it lasted," Sophia sighed, "but it wasn't for long. Neither of us was a good pilot or mechanic, we did what we could to maintain the ship, amateurs as we were. One week while touring the Orion belt systems the ship started to sound, strained when we sang. It wasn't long before we could tell the Fond Farewells was trying to keep herself together for us. Systems started to have failures or hiccups."

At this point she started to tear up. Alk'rona gestured for an aide to bring something for her, "You do not need to talk about this anymore if it distresses you ma'am. What you've said already is valuable data."

"Thank you kindly, but that wasn't everything. At the end of that trip, just a few thousand kilometres from a station, the engines and reactor failed," at this point Sophia was speaking through soft, quiet sobs, "Tim had gotten in a mood just before and started putting our important things in the escape pod."

Alk'rona did her best to console her with a few strokes of a soft antenna on her arm, "What happened next?"

"Well, he tried to get the reactor going but the other systems started to fail. The ship systems seemed to crumble as if she'd been waiting for us to get close enough to a station for her to let go," said Sophia as she stemmed the sobs, with only a few small tears escaping her eyes, "We made it to the pod and decoupled from the Fond Farewells. The station emergency response picked us up within the hour."

Quietly she laughed, "It turns out the Fond Farewells had several outstanding recalls on its systems that the previous owner hadn't made us aware of. Insurance told us we were lucky to have even made it halfway through Orion with her."

"That's quite a story Mrs. Tiller, thank yoy for sharing it… And I'm sorry for the loss of your husband." replied Alk'rona

———End of Interview #23———

That interview seems to suggest that the Fond Farewells had some level of agency in its continued existence. After a look into the Tiller's backgrounds neither has a degree in stellar vessel maintenance. It is unlikely either of them would have been able to keep a ship that should be in a scrapyard running by skill alone. One thing does stand out however.

Mrs. Tiller has grown to be a renowned singer in the fringes of frontier colonization. Known for her songs to resonate through entire stations, bringing her listeners to her. It may be that the sonic resonances of her voice and the Fond Farewells helped keep major faults from appearing while they traveled, until the faults hit a critical threshold.

This is circumstantial at best however; following it up would require us to impose on an elderly human's time for a great length. This research will simply need to be considered for continued observation until such a time we have enough anecdotal evidence to warrant a full research grant. Interviewers Gwuogh Chirryp and Queen Alk'rona have decided to continue their volunteer work with our study and have asked for lee way in potentially using this data in some of their own research.