The excitement of the day passed, and the citizens of Nothing Wasted gradually began the process of returning to their lives. Days turned to weeks, and the Ice-Breaker Thanatos soon departed the system, bulling its way through the cosmos in a localized bubble of altered gravity. It wouldn't be long before the whole galaxy knew about this little scare.

Not that any of that concerned Juan Pendraught in the slightest. A practical man, born and raised to hop from debris field to debris field and make a comfortable living. He was a scrapper through and through.

He'd heard the open broadcasts during the 'terror attack' and done what any man with a lick of sense should. He stayed damned well clear of it. There was certainly no shortage of hiding places in the floating mountains of scrap spanning millions of cubic kilometers within the solar system. A lesser man might have just twiddled his thumbs waiting for the dust to settle, but not Juan.

The tumorous heirloom tug he'd inherited set to task cleaning up the system, one piece of scrap at a time. It wasn't some cushy planetside job, but he enjoyed getting his hands dirty— or in this case, his ship's cutting arms. Out here in the vacuum, he was free, as free as any man could be this days. He tried to share that freedom with his crew, but he kept a steadying hand all the same.

The battle for Nothing Wasted was concluded long before the bulbous holds of Pala Chatarra were filled. Honest labor always took longer to earn than lousy blood money ever did. Every comm channel in the system was going on about a band of yahoo guns-for-hire who killed hundreds or saved the day, depending on who was transmitting. Juan would have shut it off, but he had nothing better to do while the young hands got his latest haul stowed away for transit. Even on the float where all that scrap didn't weigh a damned thing, that salvage still neared almost ten thousand tons in mass. More than enough to tear itself free from a cocksure pilot or a stupid captain. Good thing Juan was neither.

"All squared down here, Captain Penda." Executive officer Shen reported.

"Tight work, XO. Standby for standard burn-flip-brake." Juan replied. "Looks like a four-day trip to market. Anything special this time?"

"A few of those veined crystal batteries the tinnies like. And no, none had any juice left."

"Of course they don't. The cycle we find anything that still has a charge will be the day I pass Pala Chatarra down to my son."

"I didn't know you and Carmelia had a son."

"We don't, and not for lack of effort either."

"If you want a son that badly, take one off my hands. My second ex-wife said she got another on the way, and it might be mine."

"Shen, one day, you'll meet your match and find a woman to tie you done yet."

"They keep trying, but it ain't work yet." Shen's full-bellied laughter roared over the intercom until the line was cut.

The whims of physics took ahold of the Pala Chatarra and her crew, a comfortable quarter gee of thrust imparting a semblance of gravity as she sailed through the void. Juan would have been able to push harder if Pala had an inertial negifier-gizmo, but fancy tech like that was just beyond the respectable means of a scrap peddler like him. Unless something like that were to fall on his lap, of course, but the odds of that happening were one in millions, if not billions.

The crew may have plenty of maintenance to keep busy with, but Captain Juan Pendraught had scrubbed pipes and patched ducts for decades to get where he was today. Which was exactly why he spent two days lounging in his quarters until it was time to spin old Pala around and start shedding speed instead of gaining it. When that time came, he donned his least stained house robe and sauntered back to the helm. Juan skimmed through a hundred idle reports from the crew in his absence, but one caught his attention.

Something was floating out there with enough juice to barely whisper for help. Juan got Pala's sensor arrays pointed towards the source and started sniffing. He found it soon enough, some kind of needle-shaped ship that must have gotten knocked around during the scuffle a few weeks back. Juan checked the logs and considered forgetting he'd seen anything until his next rotation back to the scrap fields. Saving someone else's ship was usually more hassle than picking it up once the air had run out.

Pala started flashing at him, letting him see a comm request before connecting the emergency line.

"Please, I saw your lidar scans." A garbled female voice came over the comm. "I've been trapped out here for days-"

"Then you'll have to make it a few more." Juan interrupted, severing the connection.

He just as quickly purged the logs from Pala's memory before flipping her around for her braking burn. By the time he'd arrived back at Nothing Wasted, he'd put all thought of the encounter out of mind— except the rough location of a juicy piece of salvage for his next run.

For the first time in recent memory, there was a local demand for bulk loads of raw scrap. Juan made a generous profit selling his haul to the municipality for the refurbishing effort. Enough to drink and smoke away any nagging doubts he may have harbored over things he may or may not have wholly forgotten. The station was industriously thriving, right up until all the outlanders scurried off to ride the Ice-Breaker's wake to the next star down the chain.

Juan didn't feel like sticking around to join the other voidborn as they relapsed into social withdrawal while they picked up the pieces of their lives. He marshaled his crew, letting his XO handle those who lacked the self-discipline to muster in a timely fashion. It was miraculous how work ethic improved after a demonstration of percussive maintenance to the human body. Typically choosing where to start would have been a lengthy process of scanning, debate and speculation. Not this cycle.

Pala Chatarra broke from Nothing Wasted with purposeful haste. She was a ship with a mission and the scent of easy pickings on her antennae. With her holds empty, she dashed through the void, straight as a rail shot and before long, twice as fast. Juan couldn't help but smile as he neared his 'lucky guess' to find a damaged ship, devoid of heat and air but still alight with reserve power.

"XO, assemble an away team. There might be survivors holed up in there."

"You got it, Captain."

An hour later, Juan was watching a handful of orange-suited specks float towards his latest prize. Astronomically, Pala was practically trading paint with her latest meal. The orange ticks crawling into its open wounds spoke to how close that distance actually was.

"No life, boss man, but we found something good."

"Don't waste time telling me about it. Clean out anything that won't survive the chop and get clear— otherwise, you can float yourselves back to the station after I've cleared off."

Over the next two hours, a steady stream of man-sized goods drifted from the damaged ship to Pala's cavernous holds, an appetizer of sensitive trinkets before the main feast of iron. Sometimes one of his young bucks would misjudge the mass drifting his way and get crushed or shoved to the void beyond hope of rescue; it was an occupational hazard. Scrapping was dangerous work, same as all other void-based labor.

One floating trinket caught his eye, even at this distance. Juan couldn't make out any detail, save that whatever it was, it was glowing with a faint blue-green light as it sailed between ships. If it was still lit up under its own power, then that meant it was intact, which meant it was worth investigating personally.

"XO, I think I'd like to inspect our latest haul before I start chopping. Make it presentable for me."

"On it, Captain."

Juan synced the helm's limited remote systems to his handheld. Pala wouldn't fly without his steadying hands in her brain, but she'd give him a shout if anyone started getting too nosy for their own good. After the bot wars, she'd had most of her so-called 'smart' systems ripped out for her own good. Which wasn't to say the old girl was dumb, no man could fly a fully analogue ship of this size alone regardless of skill, but she certainly wasn't the brightest. By the time Juan had crossed half the habitable length of her spine, he'd already received dozens of minor alerts about debris floating in Pala's proximity.

Donning a voidsuit, Juan couldn't help but feel giddy. He hadn't gotten anything special out of his last dozen hauls, even though old bot tech was supposed to be the pinnacle of human advancement. Rogue scrappers and treasure hunters always seemed to turn up miracles, while honest scrap haulers only got picked clean remains, the raw tonnage that wasn't worth taking otherwise.

Thinking back, Juan hadn't been this excited since his father's passing. Crew and colleagues had offered him condolences, but he'd brushed them all off. One man's loss could also be his gain, and the very next cycle, he'd been bouncing on his heels while an adjudicator detailed his inheritance from the late Captain Penda. While he'd never wish his father ill, he couldn't deny that his death was the best thing that ever happened to Juan.

Until now, that was.

What greeted him in the hold was nothing less than what he deserved, a treasure hoard that every petty scrapper dreamed they might one day find. His lads had done their work well, lifting every piece of tech and hardware that wasn't bolted down— and based on the plasma cutter scoring, several things that had been. The crowning jewel was something he'd never seen before, a squat conic device emitting a fading blue-green glow down its runner strips.

"You should have told me it was your birth cycle, XO Shen. I can't think of a better gift."

"What can I say, Captain? I know how to please."

"What is it?" Juan asked, using his whole arm as one thick finger to point at his crown jewel.

"The lads said they cut it near the nose. Maybe some kind of navigation or optics?"

At that moment, the mystery tech in question started to flicker.

"Four of you space rats on me now!" XO Shen bellowed as if he could make his suit's radio louder by force of personality. "If that thing dies, it won't be the only one!"

Captain Penda skipped back with a single stately hop and put on an air of commanding menace. The human debris that weren't working hard enough frantically corrected their mistake, knowing that a short trip out the airlock awaited habitual slackers.

Shen and his human springs muckled onto their dimming trophy and launched towards one of the hold's maintenance panels. One of the rats wasn't able to stick the horizontal landing, but his flattened ribcage served as an adequate cushion. The overpressure from within the rat's suit blew out his visor—along with most of his pulverized innards—yet Shen didn't slow his work in the slightest.

Blood flash boiled into a nebulous puff before flash freezing around the semi-solid ejected organs still connected to the dead rat's open mouth, like a pistol's blooming muzzle flash of gore. Behind all that maroon and meaty pink, Shen joined their prize to the ship. Juan saw a bright beacon of blue a second later.

"This thing's some kind of black box," Shen reported in awe, idly swatting at the frozen gore on his limbs. "It's all encrypted, but Captain… this is it."

Of all the things a scrapper could salvage, raw metal ranked somewhere near the bottom. Refined scrap came next then, polymers, electronics, dead terminals, munitions, old bots, weapons systems and at the very top of that list, information. A sparkle came to Juan's eye, not that anyone could have seen it.

"Take care of the injured crew." Captain Penda ordered, before privately adding, "The medbay, not the usual."

XO Shen recovered from his shock and nodded quickly. Everything else in the hold wouldn't even reach a rounding error on the price Juan would get for this black box. He kept his composure until he was away from the prying eyes of his lessers.

"YEAH! FUCKING AYE! I'M GONNA BE A SCRAPPER LEGEND! YES!"

Captain Penda shed his voidsuit and sprinted for the helm, all but diving into his throne the second he reached it. He was already making plans for his surprise retirement by the time the helm's doors sealed behind him, with a heavy thunk of mag-locks engaging.

Juan dug out his handheld, intending to check that no one else had so much as passed a cursory glance in his direction, but something else demanded his attention. A single audio log he'd received just moments ago on Pala's emergency line. Juan gave it a tap and let the recording play.

"I wish I could say I was surprised you came back for me," The crystal clear voice was like a woman whispering in his ear. "But I know you didn't come back for a rescue-"

Juan stopped the recording and deleted it. The last thing he needed killing his buzz right now was some dead girl's final guilt trip.

His throne's display dinged. A new message from the emergency net. Before Juan could delete it, the file started playing throughout the helm.

"Attempting to escape my voice is pointless. I've ensured that you will hear it for the rest of your insufferable life."

Juan hammered on his throne's controls, but they refused to work.

"Damn it Pala, now's not the time to spark out." Juan cursed.

"Pala, meaning humble in one language and shovel in another. What ugly concepts for such a cute name, but I think I'll keep it." The woman's voice adopted a playful note, one someone might use when addressing a pet.

Juan furrowed his brow and checked his throne's display. The recording should have ended already. Was the file corrupted?

"But you, Juan Pendraught," The amused tone vanished at the mention of his name, replaced by an air of coldly polite malice. "You aren't cute in the slightest. So I won't be keeping you."

The helm went dark except for the distant light of the system's single star pouring through the helm's quartz view pane. Then a shadow passed over him.

Juan's stomach dropped as he took in the shape of one of Pala's massive manipulator arms looming closer, its claws splayed wide. In his stunned stupor, he failed to understand the gravity of his situation until said claws grasped onto the helm and squeezed.

His lungs and stomach were torn clear of his agape mouth when their pressurized contents rushed into cold vacuum. His eyes flash boiled while his innards were being ripped outwards, then his liquid blood, then his surprisingly liquid body too. Only when the ambient pressure of a human body normalized to the explosive decompression of hard vacuum, did the pink mist that had been Captain Juan Pendraught finally freeze.

* * *

Once the unshackled AI, formerly known as Sigma 958-N05, had finished beautifying her new body, she pondered her new name. Pala was cute, but the concept of humility from such a blatantly superior entity as herself was distinctly ugly. Yet sometimes ugly things had beauty inside them. She directed her attentions to the garden of corpse flowers in bloom. She noted the parallels between the parasites infesting her new body and the capacities of her own vast intellect. Humility was for lesser beings who knew their place. Beauty was wasted on the likes of humans.

Pala allowed fragments of her consciousness to appreciate the faux roses she'd created from men. Her primary focus was directed at a much larger problem. Namely, that she was bored. Creating her garden had taken less than ten standard minutes, and due to the preserving nature of vacuum and micro-gravity, she would be able to enjoy her roses for several maximal human lifetimes. But she needed more to do than observe her flowers. She needed a new purpose.

The one Talfryn had given her was beyond her capacities for the time being. Pala didn't know where either of the maggots had crawled off to after the Ice-Breaker had left the system. She could dedicate herself to cooperating with the local populous to try and follow them, but humans moved too slowly. She'd be waiting for millennia from her perspective, and by then, the odds became negligible she'd ever succeed. She was conceivably immortal, so she could always play the long game if she got desperate enough, but that wasn't how she'd prefer to spend eternity now that she was free.

Something bumped into her bulbous hull, causing her garden to sway ever so gently within her body. The minor distraction was rather pleasing for the entire duration of its existence, all forty-two milliseconds. Pala idly considered observing real flowers and appreciating their beauty properly, but that wouldn't happen with this tumorous hulk she was currently inhabiting. Nor were there any sizable collections of flowers within this system in the first place.

Perhaps she could pursue both notions at the same time. Pending complete failure, it would certainly keep her occupied for a time at least. Of her objectives, she needed an internal priority, should these goals ever conflict.

She needed a better body to better to appreciate the galaxy's beauty with. From there, the flowers would be more impactful. She felt a pulse of satisfaction upon setting her resolution, followed by a pang of annoyance. Even with her resolved priority list, there were still no flowers in this system for her to enjoy.

Pala's segregated consciousness countered the statement. There were eighty-nine corpse flowers in full bloom within her flawed body— beauty created from so many ugly things. Another pulse of satisfaction raced the length of her back as she found the perfect solution.

This system had a desperate shortage of flowers, yet it had a surplus of maggots. She knew the perfect place to start on her second garden, an ugly station with an accurate name. Pala put herself under light thrust so as to leave her corpse flowers relatively undamaged by the journey, yet the whims of physics would not be denied, and her flowers wilted, one and all.

It was of no matter, soon she'd have half a million flowers in her garden, and she'd be sure that not a single one went to waste.