A woman with white hair, red eyes, and pale skin... We're sitting on a rooftop I don't recognize, under a blue sky that feels so alien yet familiar to me. It's such a peaceful and intimate moment... I flip through to the next page of a book with words that are nothing but blurry scribbles, after all, the book isn't what's important here... It's the woman.

She says something with that lovely smile on her face, yet the words don't reach my ears as she scoots a little closer and leans her head on my left shoulder. I'm filled with such an indescribable warmth, a sense of longing and need that makes my heart ache in a way I just can't put into words.

I reach out with my right hand to gently cradle her cheek because I'm about to surprise her with a kiss, but just before I make contact, an alert trilled in my head as the uplink to my ship so rudely notifies me with an update.

I open my eyes to see the familiar ceiling of my ship quarters as panels of updates and notifications unobtrusively fill my periphery. With a glance, I see my right hand absently clutching at my left shoulder socket, my remaining human limb absently feeling the cold metallic alloy that long replaced what used to be me as I sigh to nobody in particular.

"Did you have the rabbit lady dream again?" Perci asked, her holographic figure sitting at my desk with my private terminal as she slowly kicked and swayed her legs off the edge of my desk.

"Rabbit lady?" I parroted back; I knew what she was talking about but I wasn't quite ready to talk about it as I released my shoulder before reaching down to my waist and disconnecting the thick cable that uploaded my system's diagnostics to the ship computers and kept my energy cells topped off.

Once I was unplugged from the ship, the cable began sliding back into the port I pulled it from while I started going through the motions of pushing myself up and balancing myself on my metallic leg stumps.

"You know the one, you've told me about her." Perci mentioned with a small smile on her little face. She made a show of waving her hand, opening the compartment that stored my limbs as I reached out and grabbed my left arm before bringing it over to my exposed shoulder socket and hooking it back into place. "The woman with the white hair, red eyes, and pale skin. Your description of her reminds me a lot of those albino rabbits from Earth, hence 'the rabbit lady'." She explains to me all over again

"What makes you think I was dreaming about her?" I deflect for a little while longer as my body jolts with the rush of information, my systems syncing up with my arm while the readouts for the arm scroll down the left hand side of my vision as I flex my artificial limb, opening and closing my left hand before taking up my right leg and hooking that one up next.

"Well, your brain waves showed that you were having a happy dream, and they matched the usual patterns during other times where you've mentioned having that dream... The same areas tend to light up in similar ways, and then when you wake up you tend to be rather sad." She explained, her usual cheer was rather subdued as she watched me jolt again as the diagnostics for my right leg started scrolling down my field of view.

I just sigh a little more as I collect my left leg from the wall panel and go through the motions of hooking that one up while flexing the mechanical toes of my right leg. "Haven't I asked you to not watch me while I sleep? I'm sure there are plenty of other things that could demand your attention on our ship..." I said almost rhetorically, we've had this conversation quite a few times before but it's not like I care whether or not she watches me. I know it's one of the many ways she shows that she cares for and looks out for me, so I'm not about to put up more than a token defense concerning the violation of my mental privacy.

At that, Perci just smiled as she stood on my desk and played at walking along the edge of it. "Well, if I didn't know how you were feeling, how would I know whether or not to start with the good news or bad news first?" She mused while pretending to nearly lose her balance, complete with the sudden arm flailing before righting herself and stepping away from the edge of my desk with a playful smile on her little face.

I couldn't help but muster a little smile as I watched her, but it was soon replaced by a grimace as my body involuntarily jolted one more time as the diagnostics rolled down my periphery. "Alright, well then... Go ahead, give me the news." I offered, flexing my mechanical toes before pushing off my bed and tapping at a panel in my room which began pulling my bed into the wall, giving me more room to move around as I started my 'stretches' to make sure everything was in order.

"Good news first." Perci chirped as she mimicked my movements, her projection pantomiming my stretches as I balanced on my left foot, brought my right knee up to my chest, and held that pose. "We found the trace of our package's vessel and tracked it to its last known location."

"So what's the bad news?" I asked as I brought my right leg down and began to balance on it while bringing my left knee up to my chest.

"It was just the black box, but in other news, there were no signs of a battle in local space, so at the very least the black box was likely deliberately removed and ejected into the void." She explained while rolling her shoulders in the same way I was before shadowboxing like me.

"So from the sounds of it, the pirates likely took the whole ship with them; so we aren't looking for a frozen corpse floating around in space, right? Did you already bring in the black box?" I asked as I threw in alternating high kicks before winding down and reviewing the readouts for my limbs on my HUD and nodding with satisfaction at the results.

"Well of course Rosie, I had a maintenance drone scoop it up and brought it into the cargo bay. I also took the liberty of mining the data from its records and triangulated the possible destination the pirates were headed for after taking into account the surrounding star systems based on the nearest jump points in this area." Perci explained eagerly as the door to my quarters slid open the moment I took a step towards them.

"So we have a heading then? That's good to hear." I said as I made my way down the central hall of my ship to the kitchenette which was also the common room that separated the cockpit from the rest of my ship. Looking around, I spotted a still steaming, fresh cup of coffee from the drink dispenser.

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"Yep! I've also gone ahead and set our flight plan to the nearest star systems which don't have properly settled colonies or void stations, essentially we're going to be checking out wildspace and see if we can't track down our pirates from there." Perci explained as her hologram appeared on the counter next to the dispenser and smiled up at me. "Given all these developments, I figured I should wake you so you can start preparing your loadout, you know, just in case we find them sooner rather than later."

"Sounds good to me Perci, excellent work." I say while offering her small form a smile. Taking up the cup from the dispenser, I take a sip of the hot but not scalding liquid, savoring the brew which had been flavored with hazelnut syrup before heading back down the hall toward the armory. "We restocked components for the printer, right?" I asked, not entirely sure of the stock right this moment as I took another sip of coffee.

"Of course Rosie, I made sure to handle that as I found that job with Miss Lazuli. We can't have you being unprepared, now can we." She mused from the ship speakers as the doors to the armory opened. Inside I spotted the two sets of armor that I was currently maintaining, the one on the right was the 'Infiltrator' series; specially designed with light armor for stealth and getting into and out of places without leaving much of a trace.

The second set I maintained was the 'Sentinel' series with mid-grade armor which could survive against sustained fire of kinetic weapons as well as shielding graded against laser and plasma fire. This one was geared towards combat in closed spaces with a focus on mobility rather than hunkering down and trying to tank sustained fire in a corridor.

Most of my equipment was modular, and the loadouts provided to me by the BCC tended to cover a wide variety of possible scenarios, though whole new sets of armor were costly to print and put together.

"So when are you going to finally splurge for the 'Juggernaut' series?" Perci muses as her holographic image appears on the shoulders of the 'Infiltrator' armor set, her small figure looking rather cozy as she lays on her side in a very relaxed manner while I make my way over to the weapons' workbench to look over what I'll bring with me.

"I'm not going to because I don't plan on ever putting myself in a situation that would demand such heavy armor." I mused almost dismissively as I grabbed a telescopic baton, flicking it open in my right hand and looking it over before closing it back up by pressing the end against my left palm. "And because I'm not a battle junkie that enjoys running through warzones like Sakura-17 and Waflorz-28." I said with a small smirk as I set the baton down in a bin before taking up a compact laser pistol and disassembling the modular sidearm to check over the parts and see if anything needed replacing.

"I don't care if you're a battle junkie or not, I just think it would be neat if you started keeping a set around. Better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it, ya know." She quoted to me as she disappeared from the shoulder of the 'Infiltrator' armor and reappeared in front of me as she walked along the workbench and stepped over the grip of the laser pistol before sitting down on a low-powered motorized screwdriver.

"Are you still thinking about that mining outpost?" I asked as I recalled the job from around three months ago. I had been tasked with delivering some shutdown codes to a mining facility on an ice planet that had been taken over by some rebels in the middle of some civil war of some kind, I didn't know the specifics and it wasn't my job to know.

The plan had gone mostly without a hitch and I had shut down the main reactor which was keeping the facilities running, though it was on my way out that I had been spotted by the rebels and they wheeled out a mining laser they retro-fitted into a mobile laser cannon and started blasting at me with what power was still stored in the battery that was mounted to it. Between the rebels and their own weapons and the laser cannon itself, I ended up getting pinned and needed Perci to bring the ship in for a 'danger close' extraction that cost me my left arm.

Of course, it was just my prosthetic, but it was a pretty close call that could've ended up with me losing my life if I had made any more mistakes that day. Ever since then, Perci would occasionally suggest I look into getting the 'Juggernaut' series of armor since that set was graded for heavy arms and energy weapons on par with a mining laser. While I can appreciate the sentiment, I feel that it's just a knee-jerk reaction on Perci's part and that sort of costly expense isn't necessary for the sorts of jobs I usually sign on for.

As I began checking the laser pistol's energy pack for its current charge, I watched Perci just pout at my words before twiddling her holographic fingers together. "Well excuse me for still being concerned Rosie." She replied indignantly before crossing her little arms together. "I'm the one who was getting live updates on your vitals throughout that whole encounter, I know just how close to death you were and just how much pain you were in. So forgive me for wanting to avoid something like that from happening again." She said while sounding almost frantic as her image flickered for a second.

I just offered her a sigh and took up my cup of coffee, taking another sip of the brown liquid before setting it back down and looking her over. "I really do appreciate your concern Perci, but that armor is just impractical for me to maintain. I'm gonna have close calls, that's just the risk we run doing the work we do... But I know with you watching my back, no matter how much damage I might sustain, you'll make sure I make it out alive and mostly intact." I explained simply as I went about putting the laser pistol back together.

Perci still pouted a little while longer before tilting her head side to side and letting out a little sigh. "Fine Rosie, if you put it that way, I suppose I shouldn't keep worrying as much as I have been." Her image flickered as she now stood, walking away from the motorized screwdriver as she wandered around the modular, compact laser pistol while I snapped everything back into place. “Though if you’re gonna try and get me to relax on the ‘Juggernaut’ armor series, then you’re gonna have to let me make some modifications to the ‘Sentinel’ series, deal?” She said as she held out her hand as if to shake on it.

I couldn’t help but quirk a brow at her and offer her a vague smile as the edges of my lips twitched up for a moment. “What sort of modifications are you planning?”

Perci just grinned playfully before bringing a finger to her lips. “It’s gonna be a surprise, just trust me, okay?” She mused before holding her hand out to me again.

After a moment I simply shrugged before reaching out my index finger and placing it in her palm, shaking her hand in agreement. “I suppose I could live with that.” I said in response; though as soon as we shook hands, the ‘Sentinel’ series armor set was pulled into the wall as the faint sounds of mechanical whirring and drilling pricked my ears.

Perci just smiled a little more before her image flickered for a moment. “I just got a hit on the package’s vessel.” She enthused excitedly as the door to the armory opened. “You’re gonna want to take a look at this.”

“Sure, okay.” I say as I stand, setting the mostly reassembled laser pistol down on the workbench before getting to my feet and making my way back down the hall again.

The doors to the cockpit open at my approach, my chair rising up from the floor as I settled in and began remotely syncing my HUD to my ship as the interface started popping out at me with all kinds of relevant data.

Once everything settled I looked out through the voidshield and spotted a vessel in the reflective glow of a gas giant. “So what am I looking at?” I asked Perci, letting her take the reins.

“You’re looking at some no good pirates, that’s what.” She mused almost playfully, choosing to remain out of view for now as the voidshield’s HUD began to zoom and focus on the vessel. “Looks like they’re scrappers too, that’s why we didn’t see signs of a proper battle.” She speculated as the image focused in and showed the package’s vessel beneath the pirate’s vessel, only it looks like barely half of it was still intact.

“What are you thinking? Close range EMP to knock out the ship’s systems and take the whole ship, crew and all?” That would require some rather specialized and powerful equipment, but a scrapper vessel that big would likely have the power source to do it.

“Something like that Rosie.” Perci answered in agreement as the image zoomed out to look over the ship in question. “That whole vessel is just a big ole floating chop shop, it’s an inspired operation for sure.” She mentioned thoughtfully before finally coming into view as she appeared on the ship’s console. “I’ll start plotting a good entry point, they don’t know we’re here yet, so take your time and get geared up, got it?” She enthused reassuringly with a confident thumbs up.

“Got it.” Is all I say in response before getting up and making my back down to the armory all over again.