August 11th, 8252

You rap your knuckles on the table to get everyone's attention as breakfast wraps up. Even CWO Fish is there with a (holographic) mug of coffee. So far she's mixing in well enough, helped along by the holographic projectors in her torso putting out a more human-like appearance. Plenty of her mechanical parts are still visa bale, such as her sensor tendril 'hair', but Midshipman Huckle's cybernetics are just as obvious so it's a bit of a wash.

CWO Fish drains her 'cup' and sets it on the table.

“Right, you all probably have questions about me, but I've also got a great big pile of gag orders, NDAs, and code word crap locking information down. Here's the skinny, or at least what I can give you of it. Project Hayden is aimed at creating the next generation of automatons and or artificials. Most of that involves computer science crap too far over my head to even attempt to explain in detail. The gist of it is an attempt to replicate a human brain, and the personality that can live in it, and pair it off with an artificial body. Success so far has been limited but the automaton side of the program managed to crank out the 'egghead' model aka the Automaton, Improved, mark one. With however many stars and revisions it's up to now. The Automation mark two and the Automaton, Improved mark two are hitting the prototype phases.

“Which is where I come in. Officially I'm just the first production model of an Automaton, Improved, mark two hence the serial number. Unofficially I'm another sort of prototype. You all re-discovered me back on Zures 1...”

Midshipman Huckle almost drops his mug on the table.

“Wait, M. Fish? That was you? The one who tried to upload herself?”

“The same. It was... a partial success. Forty plus years on tick-over power left a few holes that I'm still patching back up and one hell of a culture shock. Sorry about making you chase all those electrical shorts while I was borrowing some computing power to sort myself back out. The Hayden project snagged me up, with my permission, after the Navy found me in their inspection. They helped me put my bits back together again so to say and offered me this 'mobile frame' aka body in exchange for being their guinea pig as to how well slash how long a human intelligence can hold out in an immortal frame.

“The theological jury is still out on weather or not I have a soul and the Ministry of Justice is still sorting out if I'm property or a proper citizen or not. On the other hand I do have a new citizen ID and, officially, I'm the daughter of my old biological body. For a lady who thought she was never going to have kids that's a joke and a half.”

There is silence for a while as the midshipmen and you absorb this information. Personally you decide to treat CWO Fish as if she was any other human member of your crew until and unless higher authority directed you otherwise.

“Alright, gather round and raise an ear, we've got fresh movement orders as of last night and it's time we went over them.”

Your crew perks up some.

“First warp jump is back over to the Sonwatch system to confirm our warp jump drive and screens work, test out our new navigator's skills, and to top up our hydrogen reserves from the local gas giant. It's shakedown crap, but it's important shakedown crap.

“After that we have a list of three systems to check over and our pick of routes. Ideally we'd simply sweep coreward to rimward and then warp jump right on back to Sonwatch or Celesmore. We do have orders not to flee into unknown slash unsurveyed areas if we do have to run from a pirate nest or the golrak. If we encounter something like that we'll simply warp jump right back to Sonwatch and skip the system over until the Navy clears it out for us.

“The first of our target systems is Couwell. One star, asteroids, and a gas giant with eight moons. At least one moon may be habitable, so we'll make an extra pass or three over it to be sure.

“Number two on the list is the Gayle system. One star, asteroids, five worlds, four moons, and some sort of artificial orbital. Too large and angular to be organic, to metallic to be a shaped rock. The first wave scouts just skipped on by without taking a closer look, so that's on our itinerary too.

“The last system on our list is the Tumul system. We have a bit better details on this system because it used to be a Star Empire outpost until pirates wrecked the system from end to end. One star with a mean inner cauldron: radiation heavy and nasty gravity riptides from heavy solar flare activity. And a planet that we have to check out, so that's going to be interesting. The primary biosphere has two planets, a moon, and probably what's left of a watch station. Ship wrecks may also be present to go with another set of gravity riptides. The outer system has two more worlds, no moons, and yet more gravity riptides to contend with. The Star Empire wants the system re-surveyed in preparation for reclaiming the system due to the abundance of natural resources.

“Any questions?”