Junkyard Angel

[Anna Sachae]

A FEW THOUSAND KILOMETERS OUTSIDE OUTER ORBIT
VK-7183, Local Time 1050

It'd been a profitable couple of weeks. That CIS salvage job had provided Anna with a comfy little buffer, and while a normal scavenger would have just taken that as a free ticket for a quick vacation, Anna fully realized that she needed a steady account to fall back on. When the junker ship she'd spent her time on for the last week or two set out again, she was right there with it. Turn a few excess credits into many excess credits to prepare for a drought. Just in case.

For now, she hung out just shy of the cockpit. The common area had a few display screens on it for trajectory, destination, Holonet news, sports... whatever you needed, honestly. And since the crew was a bit more skeletal this time, due to most of the lads spiriting away to go squander their payday, it was pretty quiet. Just her and a couple of the older techs, each comfortable keeping their own company.

They were coming up on something. Stranded star yacht. A lot of these ships met an ill fate in the stars, either from stray space debris, cascade mechanical failure, or just piracy. Anna honestly wasn't terribly fond of the knowledge that she was effectively graverobbing, but in her defense, her intent was to salvage what could be used before it cratered into a planet while giving the dead ship a proper sendoff.

Right now, it was difficult to tell what had happened to the vessel... or really, honestly, even its class. It'd be clearer as they got closer. For now, she enjoyed her mocha and a fluffy blanket she'd picked up two shores ago.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

The vessel itself appeared to be some sort of Rulaarian pleasure yacht, the sort famous for glitzy looks and a woeful lack of anything resembling proper armament or defenses. Going by the minimal carbon scoring on the outside, it hadn't been shot up too badly; Only a few scorch marks near the engines indicated where it'd been hit. The true cause of it's derelict state was soon revealed: The gaping hole in the vessel's underbelly, near the cockpit, where a boarding torpedo had once been located, though it now floated in the small cloud of debris surrounding the vessel.

---

Within the vessel itself, something stirred. Or, rather, it tried to.

SAERA had been locked into place for well over a cycle now, a custom crafted restraining bolt attached to the back of her neck utterly locking off her motor functions. It was a cruel design, leaving her aware of all that happened around her, but unable to act upon it. An ironic twist of fate, that cruelty had kept her from being able to save the woman who'd put it on her. SAERA had witnessed it all from the confines of a locker she'd been placed into for travel.

She'd heard the rumblings of the ship as it'd been struck and it's engines disabled, that terrible screeching of the hull as it was rend open, allowing the pirates on board. The blasters and slugthrowers going off as her master's crew were cut down one by one.

And then, as the chaos came to an end, the silence.

And since then, SAERA remained, a helpless observer to it all. Left to do nothing but think, and wait in silence. But that silence was broken, if only dimly, by the distant sound of engines.

That couldn't be possible though, could it? Was her core processor finally starting to die out, and she was imagining a salvation that would never come?

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

The entire salvage ship wracked with a loud thunk. Docking claws attached. The hull had been breached, so there wasn't much need for them to be gentle with this one. The interior would already be vented and frozen, possibly full of mynocks, and utterly inhospitable. Not an awful lot of damage to be done by just stabbing the poor ship's corpse full of industiral struts. There was a hissing from one side of the scavenger vessel as a boarding tube vacuum-sealed itself to one side of the yacht and two men - two-thirds of the entire crew at the moment - started to cut away at the magnetically sealed door with a pair of plasma torches.

A minute or two later, the airlock to the salvage ship clicked shut, and Anna trotted forward in a fully sealed exo-suit to join the much older mechanics inside the other ship. Inside was... well, a mess. Boarding action, looked like. Pirates, maybe a gangster hit squad. Black Sun was on the rise, after all. With a sigh, Anna frowned and leaned back against the interior wall of the ship, letting her sealed helmet sink low. Why did they always have to show up where everyone around had died a violent, unpleasant death? Just once, let there be a benevolently abandoned ship, rather than a floating tomb.

With her eyes closed, listening to the quiet sounds of a dead engine echo through the entire yacht, Anna had intended to search for anything of sentimental value. Paintings or heirlooms, that sort of thing. Returning them to their next of kin was always the right thing to do... and normally the gratuity wasn't bad, either. This time, though, she heard something else. There was something still alive on this ship.

Her eyes shot open and without a hint of restraint, she bounded across the barren, gravity-less bulkhead towards what seemed to be a private room. Dead woman, mummified by the vacuum of space. Broken valuables, blaster fire... a locker. One hand to her toolbelt, Anna reached for her own plasma cutter. If anything in here was still conscious, she absolutely had a new objective. The money could wait. There were lives to save.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

A rumbling, the ship was rocked by the impact of another pressing up against it. Then another screech, not as violent as the boarding torpedo, more controlled, industrial events. For a moment, SAERA's memories of the incident flashed through her processors, filling her with the artificial equivalent of a fight or flight response. A sensation somewhere between fear and anticipation swept through her, the knowledge that this wasn't some sort of strange, electronic dream. It was accompanied by a strange tingling that made SAERA worry some internal circuit had finally ruptured, the precursor to cascade systems failure. Focusing on it for a moment she realized what it was: Hope.

Then came the rapid thunk of boots against the ship's deck as something approached. Or, someone.

The Replica Droid still couldn't move, couldn't call out to draw attention to herself. Couldn't so much as move to rattle against the locker she was in. But, the figure seemed to know she was there. There was no hesitation she could pick up, the stranger had crossed the room directly to her.

There was the sparking and hiss of a plasma cutter starting up, and the sound of metal scorching as it began to cut through the lock. Were she able to, SAERA would have held her breath with anticipation as the old locker door whined in protest at being pried open. Light flooded her ocular sensors, more than she'd had in over a year. She could see the room, her dead master floating in the distance, the signs of conflict.

The figure standing before her.

The restraining bolt kept her from reaching out, from speaking. But she was supremely aware of the suited woman standing in front of her. The isolation, the seeming eternity of nothingness that had followed the pirate's raid had suddenly ended. SAERA felt almost overwhelmed by the sudden stimuli, her thought process almost grinding to a halt in awe of the situation.

---

---

Her savior would be greeted by the sight of what appeared to be a woman within the locker. Compared to the other bodies in the ship, she appeared to be in much better condition. Her skin was pale, but, not the frozen blue of the unfortunates floating in the void. No breath came from her lips, however. No motions came from her either, though there was something alarmingly 'alive' about her appearance, stiff as it was. It looked almost like she was asleep, were it not for those bright blue eyes seeming to peer straight at [member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

The locker cracked open and Anna took stock of what she saw within. No blue skin, and of course, she'd noticed it, so it wasn't a corpse. An android of some kind, possibly an entertainment model. With a sigh, her shoulders slumped a bit. It was almost depressing how the only thing to survive whatever doom had befallen this ship was a testament to the depravity of the wealthy. Still, it would be patently unfair to think of this poor thing in that light. It hadn't been her choice to be purpose-built as an effigy of sin.

With an uncomfortable mix of compassion and pity, Anna reached a single hand towards the... lovebot's chassis. "Alright then, sweetie. Tell me your-" Her fingers twitched as she actually touched her. "...story..." Anna had expected cool hardware and a vampire light. To her surprise, this android was in power-saver mode. Without even meaning to, Anna's mind flashed with a year worth of silence and isolation, followed very swiftly by a montage of the deaths of everyone this poor thing had ever interacted with. Force, why was the galaxy so horrible? Why was literally everything a tragedy by the time she found it?

Behind her bubble helmet, as so often happened when she dove too deep into a machine's life, she felt her eyes sting. Unfortunately, she couldn't reach her face to wipe it clean, so she settled for something more active. In a brief moment of contact, through the torrent of painful memories and mechanical emotions, Anna had distinctly felt all of this droid's attention, loathing, and powerless despair concentrated so thoroughly on one point. She reached behind the mechanical woman's neck, tapped two buttons, and pulled off the restraining bolt.

She'd have time to be depressed by the sheer proximity to this walking sob story later. Right now, she needed to help. With her most sympathetic smile, she moved forward to catch the droid if it fell. "Easy there. How do you feel? Can you run a diagnostic for me?"

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

Such a simple thing, a touch after such a long period of isolation, and it went through SAERA like an electric shock. For a moment the pale haired Android wondered if by some twist of fate the unexpected contact had been too much for her system to bear, as she felt herself pitching forward with the restraining bolt removed. Then it came to her: Movement.

She caught herself on the woman, stumbling for the first time as subroutines that'd gone unused for over a year suddenly flared to life. SAERA was almost hesitant as she raised a hand, staring down at it in fascination. Outwardly, she looked calm and expressionless, the rush of sensations going through the droid utterly lost to a novice or casual observer. Then again, albeit unknown to SAERA, her present observer was anything but an untrained eye when it came to droids.

Given Anna's particular abilities, she'd likely be able to sense what was going on inside the droid: Waves of shock, surprise, confusion, sadness and euphoria all at once. These emotions flashed through her in an instant, before her hand fell back to her side and her gaze snapped back up to meet the strange woman's. Standing up straight and under her own power once more, she answered.

"Diagnostic Protocol Resolved; I am fully functional; No external or internal damages." SAERA reported, her words mechanical and dispassionate, even though her tone was anything but robotic. "Time since last diagnostic = 392 Days." She continued, her words delivered the same way one might comment on the weather, and yet beneath it there was a subtle sense of wonder at even being able to speak again. "Time spent in observational stasis: 390 days. Time since critical mission failure: 9361 Hours, 37 Minutes, 42 Seconds." The droid tensed up for a moment, hands clenching into fists, before being released again, remaining at her sides.

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Touching that droid while she ran through the medley of emotions and responses that comprised her frantic, chaotic processor was an experience. Part of her wanted to soothe that overheating circuitry with a gentle push in the right direction, but (perhaps un)fortunately, Anna had decided long ago that things like that were unhealthy shortcuts. Psychoanalyzing a troubled droid was more helpful than brute-forcing their processes into compliance. This poor metal lady needed help, not control.

Anna waited as long as the machine needed her to wait, standing close enough to be a brace, or even just a comforting hand on her shoulder. Some HRDs had tactile receptors to help them properly react to physical stimuli... though Anna couldn't presently feel anything like that on this one. When the white-haired android was finished, her rescuer took note of every mental snag she got hung on. Critical mission failure. Alright, that was probably the cause of her software stress. "Well, even if your hardware's up to code, you look tired. We cut in through the port hull into some kind of lounge. If you'll follow me back that way, I can get you through the airlock, back to our ship."

Standing properly, Anna stayed near enough to be a human handrail if necessary and actively waited for the android to move. "You'll probably feel better after a reboot and recharge. I've got a universal power station by my bench." Translation: this unit needed sleep. She'd been awake and trapped in her own frozen body for a year. No man-portable OS worked well after a year of constant uptime.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

The woman had a fair point. It wasn't entire accurate, she didn't exactly need to recharge. There were droids out there that'd existed for tens, hundreds and even thousands of years. Naturally, given her role, SAERA was meant to be capable of functional with little to no downtime. She was meant to serve at her master's side: Beautiful, Deadly and Ever Present. But there was still some truth to Anna's words none the less. There were certain things that were needless for an android: That didn't mean however that they didn't simply 'feel good'.

Bathing, Food, Sleep, Entertainment = Things that weren't necessary to her survival in the slightest but that'd been built into both her software and hardware to provide a positive feedback loop, all with the goal of selling the illusion of her humanity. Things that she'd been been built to 'enjoy' but had largely denied in her life. It was one of the many things she'd dwelt on during her confinement, why had she been created this way, if she was punished for indulging in her human impulses? That, and countless other questions had plagued her during that period of isolation. At present, however, there was a whole flood of new questions running through her mechanical mind.

Most of all, at the present moment in time, nothing sounded more pleasing than the idea of sleep. The utter bliss of not needing to be aware of anything, if only for a little while. SAERA nodded in agreement, stepping out of the locker, a gesture that was as much a shift in scenery as it was an in her mental state. She felt an almost crushing burden being lifted off her as she left that small metal box, taking a look around the room for the first time in ages. "Your offer is appreciated. However, I am meant as a self sustainable unit. I do not require recharging." She paused right after speaking, turning to look at Anna. "...But, I would value the chance to power down and...." Again she paused, as if she was choosing her words very carefully. "Sleep."

Naturally, her eyes came to rest on the body in the corner, the most damming symbol of her failure. Again, her fist tightened and then released. She turned her head back to the path in front of her and continued walking. She'd had time enough to acknowledge her failure, mourning was long past. Several steps, each one surer than the last, and she was at the door.

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Anna's frizzy hair bunched up inside her helmet as she nodded in response, then led the poor, over/understimulated arm candy machine out of the room that had become her prison. Force, this was going to take some work. If she was going to get this android mentally and emotionally solvent again, she'd need to unwind a year of isolation with the knowledge that she'd failed at her primary directive. That would mean she'd need to know a lot more about the frozen mummy floating in one corner of the room, the history of the ship they were standing in, maybe do some digging through the droid's memories while she slept...

It was not going to be pleasant living through all of that pain, but it was exceedingly necessary.

With her magnetic boots, Anna guided her little rescued bucket of neuroses through the corpse of the ship she'd been imprisoned on for a year. No gravity, so the white-haired droid floated behind her until they made it to the airlock. Gravity reasserted, she reached out her other hand to help keep the fembot upright. When the door hissed open, the mechanic led her over to a pile of junk and debris with a gently reclined operating chair on one side, right next to a power generator. Her chocolate-caramel caf was still steaming, so as she encouraged the droid to sit down, she pulled off her bubble helmet and gave it a sip.

"...Oh that's better," the dark-haired woman purred after a few seconds of enjoying the sweet, black ambrosia slowly sliding down her throat. When she was done blissing out, she offered the mug to the droid. "Not sure if you're built for food, but you're welcome to a drink if you want. I'm Anna." As she spoke, she fluffed her wild hair out of her exosuit. Give her time to settle in. If she just wanted to power down, absolutely let her do that. Maximum understanding.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

If leaving her locker had been a drastic change in perspective, leaving the ship she'd spent nearly all her life aboard was even more so. While she'd visited plenty of planets following her master around, the rich, sadistic Heiress tended to prefer hosting events board the privacy of her own vessel. Not only did it allow her to project more power while displaying her lavish riches: It also kept her well out of the sights of galactic law enforcers, activists and journalists.

Though SAERA didn't display it outwardly, it wasn't hard to imagine her cataloging every new detail she came across. If not just for tactical reasons, but also for raw curiosity, and the pleasure of simply having something new to look at, after starting at grey metal plating for so long. The Scavenger's ship was practically alien to her, given what she'd had to contend with until now.

Peering at the mug for a few moments, she eventually extended a hand to take it. "I have not consumed a beverage in a long time." SAERA answered, giving insight to the fact that apparently she had, or at least, could consume things. It wasn't a surprise that, stuck with a restraining bolt and locked up tight, she hadn't had any opportunities to get a drink. The android stared for a second or two longer, before bringing the still warm mug up to her lips and drinking from it. It wasn't so much an elegant and relaxed sip as an inexperienced and rather clumsy gulp of the liquid, before she offered it back to her host.

Internally, her body processed a breakdown of the chemical components of the drink, and adjusted behavioral protocols accordingly. A single sip of coffee wouldn't change much, but, as a clever way of helping her blend in, she was programmed to react in a near biological manner to what she consumed. Unless overridden by the activation of her combat protocols she could experience, or at least, act out such things as being drunk, over caffeinated and the like.

"I am SAERA; Self-Aware Exotech Replicant Android, Close Assault and Personal Entertainment model." What appeared to be a frown marred her features for a moment. "Affiliation: Independent.......Thanks to your intervention at least. I would like to express my gratitude for your actions, even if they were likely motivated by personal greed. None the less; You have saved me, and I owe you my thanks." A good deal more blunt than was perhaps appropriate, but, wordplay didn't appear to be the android's strong suit.

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Anna stared for a moment in something akin to surprise, or maybe confusion. This broke the second she collapsed into a quiet giggling fit. "It's wonderful to meet you, Saera, but I think you may have gotten the wrong impression here." She shook her head and rested one glove on the waist of her exosuit. "You don't owe me anything. I didn't 'recover' you. You're not part of my haul."

She shook her head and half-nodded to the pile of junk around her bench. "Your ship is inoperable, and we have to eat and refuel. Anything you 'owe' me for pulling off a restraining bolt, giving you a ride on this piece of crap, and a couple of sips of my caf?" She turned back towards the airlock and grabbed her bubble helmet. "Consider it repaid by whatever we take from your ship. Anything particular in there you want? I'll grab it on this trip before the old guys have a chance to find it."

As she spoke, Anna tapped one of the hoversleds, powering it up to prep for whatever crates or piles she was bringing back with her. Another yacht like this and she might be able to get a damn ship of her own... though she wasn't nearly as good at finding salvage as this crew was. Just something to consider for the future.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

It was both generous and easy for the woman to say so. It might have been a simple gesture to her, but, to SAERA it meant a lot more. Perhaps Anna hadn't realized it, but, she'd given the pale android a future, something that her owner's sadistic games had almost ripped away from her. While she might write it off as nothing major, Saera certainly wasn't about to forget that show of kindness. Perhaps a day might come where she could repay that kindness.

The idea that the ship belonged to her hadn't crossed her mind, even in the time she'd spent trapped inside it. Given that she was treated as property, the idea that she could come to own it had never occurred to her. Processing that information took almost two tenths of a second. Figuring out if there was anything she wanted to remember that ship by took almost twice as long, however.

"My weaponry. You should be able to find my Vibrosword inside my master's quarters. It's the only thing of importance left on the ship."

She didn't quite need it to be able to perform her duties, she could always come to acquire another one later. But it was the one she was the most familiar in using. She could argue for the practicalities of it, but in truth, her reasons were more sentimental than anything: She wanted to cling to the one possession she'd been allowed to choose. Everything else: Her looks, her dress, even her personality had been ruthlessly designed, chosen and drilled into her by her master.

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Anna nodded as she put her helmet back on, specifically noting that Saera didn't mention the woman in the room or any other passenger. Bad memories. Anna would have to ask about that later, when the android had calmed down. She held a single hand up to signal "thumbs up" as she made her way back into the ship. Hopefully now the droid could rest. It'd likely be a pretty long and bumpy road to get her back to anything approaching normal.

Back inside, Anna spent a minute or two looking for a vibrosword. Wasn't that difficult to find, all things considered, but it was her absolute first priority. With Saera's weapon secured, she focused on other things. Valuable things like surviving antiques, anything shiny, salvageable tech or whatever else. After maybe twenty minutes of searching, she returned with a hoversled stacked with two crates, one piled high with designer rugs and bedding and the other effectively a bin full of cannibalized parts. The ship was dead, so pulling out its heart, liver, and lungs wasn't going to do any more harm than it had already experienced.

It still hurt, though. It hurt every time Anna pulled out a vital part that would prevent the ship from ever flying again. She was dead, but her memories lived on. They echoed every time Anna took a step down her corridors. The Maliit Okere became one more ghost to haunt the galaxy, swept away in the innumerable tide of forsaken machines whose passing no one would ever mourn.

Anna Sachae would mourn, though. With every step she took, she stroked her fingers across the ship's interior paneling. She felt the ship's memories as far back as they lasted. Flying over exotic worlds, filled with the laughter and pain of dozens of people. Okere had kept her pilot and passengers safe and comfortable for decades, up until the very last minute. Her last thoughts were the same as any ship: pain and loud, then cold and quiet. Anna did her best to take it all in so she could help whatever was left of the machine's soul move on.

After half an hour she finally returned through the airlock, eyes red and face streaked with tears. Funerals were always depressing. It didn't take her but a few minutes to get all of the junk and luxuries sorted, but she made sure to lay Saera's sword by her body first. The techie was exceedingly careful not to wake her.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

For Saera, that ship had been home. It might not have been where she was 'born' technically, but, it was where she'd been unpacked and put into service. That service might have been an unpleasant affair, often contradicting the core of her programming with the often cruel and dehumanizing things she'd had to endure, but, even a broken home was still a home. And not every part of it had been bad: There were moments when she'd had control of herself, if only for brief periods. Usually when a threat had surfaced, and the rare times her master was in a charitable mood and ordered her away to train for the next bout of entertainment she was to provide. More often than not a gladiatorial combat of some sort, where she was pitted with handicap against the most extravagant foes her master could find. Worst of all though, she remembered the rush she'd felt from a victory, from taking another life. But she'd only been following her orders, hadn't she? A droid was meant to obey it's owner. Fulfilling one's orders should bring joy, shouldn't it?

Luckily, Saera wasn't actively remembering anything by the time Anna returned. Given the rather unfamiliar location she was in, she'd ended up taking her 'Nap' slumped awkardly in the corner of the room, leaning up against one of the walls. Hardly comfortable looking, but, she at least looked peaceful in her sleep. Even a little bit of it was likely doing wonders for her artificial sanity. Machines tended to dislike being run for a week. Who knows what a year of up time could do to someone?

Things were definitely looking up for her, however. Though it was a tragedy that'd caused it, she now had the sort of freedom she'd always desired. Saera didn't have the slightest clue what she intended to do with it, but, she wasn't going to let it go to waste, of that she was certain.

If she was aware of Anna's return, she didn't let onto it. And in truth, she wasn't, far too wrapped up in the dreamless sleep of an Android, getting her first proper rest in ages.

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

As she organized the last of her haul, Anna looked back over to the droid in the corner. To be fair, she'd been looking at her a lot. Basically every twelve seconds her eyes wandered to Saera, brow furrowed in the kind of sympathy you didn't get from just hearing someone's sob story. Her thoughts were clearly occupied, but she had no intention of waking the poor android up to verify any suspicions. Instead, she kept working.

It didn't take Anna more than an hour to suss out what was usable (all of it), what was valuable (most of it), and what was important (some old documents, letters to home). She cataloged each in turn. Anything that didn't have sentimental value to a living being was sellable; anything that did was firmly in the "track them down and deliver it personally" category. When she was finally done with all of the messy stuff, the young-ish Kuati woman took a detour by the refresher to wash up, then brought back two steaming mugs of caf. Hers was her usual, chocolate and caramel flavored. The other was mint-chocolate, to offer a new flavor to the reawakened droid.

With that? Anna sat down in the corner, near Saera but not touching her, covering both her shoulders and the white-haired droid's body in a couple of fluffy blankets she'd picked up recently. She had caffeine and a datapad full of diagnostics and personal files to skim through. Reading the list of the dead was plenty to keep her occupied until Saera woke up.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

Unsurprisingly, Androids didn't need nearly as much sleep as humans. Technically they needed none, in fact. But the hour or two of shutdown time definitely did Saera some good. The blanket, while unnecessary, was a nice touch to 'awaken' to and certainly went a ways toward making her feel less like a curious pile of scrap left in the corner. There was no particular writhing and yawning when the pale haired and pale in general fembot woke up, only the slight stirring of the blanket as she sat up straighter and looked around.

She was surprised to find that scavenger still nearby, though her expression remained as neutral as ever. Still, it had caught her somewhat off guard, in a pleasant sort of way. Saera shifted her gaze from Anna, glancing down at the two cups of caf she'd brought with her. The Android removed a hand from under her blankets and pointed at the untouched cup, glancing up to Anna and asking: "Is that one for me?"

The amount of effort this woman was going through to make her feel...welcomed? Was almost suspicious. Saera couldn't detect any ulterior motives behind her actions, however. Nor was there any logical reason to deceive her: It would have been easy to shut her down while she was still stuck with that restraining bolt. On top of that, she'd not only been welcomed aboard her vessel and left alone for almost an hour, but she'd even been armed while doing so. Strange.

"Have you found what you were looking for?"

[member="Anna Sachae"]

 

[Anna Sachae]

Anna looked up from the datapad she'd been tapping on for half an hour or so. Judging by how red her eyes were she didn't wear much makeup, because there were no black streaks running down her cheeks. She gave a little nod as Saera reached for the second mug, having finished her own a while ago. "More than I wanted," she replied quietly, her voice barely cracking. Holding up her datapad for the droid to see, she shook her head. "I'll need to get these back to their families. May take a couple of weeks."

Pulling the blanket closer to her skin, Anna set down her little personal computer and closed her eyes. "Every derelict is a funeral. If not for the crew, then at least for the ship. Most of the time it's just a couple of bodies too old to have any surviving kin." She took a deep breath, letting her stress out in a long sigh. "This was all... very fresh. I've got some stuff to unpack."

Not the time. Saera was just waking up for the first time after she'd been released from all obligations and torments. She needed support and understanding, not a sob story. Reaching up with the back of one wrist, Anna rubbed her eyes dry of all of the tears she'd shed for people she'd never met. "So how're you feeling? It'll be a few hours before we land anywhere, so I want to make sure you're alright before then." Since Saera would likely be going her own way the moment she had a chance. She struck Anna as the wary type, from what little contact they'd had.

[member="SAERA"]

 

[SAERA]

"Still functioning as intended." The Android reported in a rather matter of fact style. Seeing that that obviously wasn't the question Anna was looking to have answered, she gave a slight pause to consider the intricacies of her own emotional and physical state. That question was quite a bit more difficult to answer. "I do not know." Saera admitted honestly. "I do not know how I should be feeling, given the circumstances. My protocols don't include any guidelines on beginning an operational life as an independent droid after a year of inactivity. It would seem I have to figure this out one step at a time."

In truth, that was a rather scary proposition, even to a creature inherently unable to feel fear the same way a human could.

"I cannot say that I've been able to form any plans as of-" Saera stopped for a moment, looking over at Anna. "Amendment. I may have just thought of something. Perhaps I can assist you in the task you've laid out for yourself, in returning these belongings. That would afford me some level of stability until I've had time to format a proper plan for my...Life." The Android hesitantly suggested. On one hand, there was the idea of paying Anna back by helping her. On the other hand, she had to admit, the idea itself made her curious. It would provide her access to travel more easily, and it would allow her to gather more data about emotional interaction that seemed to define living beings. Things she needed if she wanted to be more than property. Of course, that was if the lone mechanic would accept her suggestion.

[member="Anna Sachae"]