Chanelle ‘Nellie’ Bonne-Chance, an orphan from birth who was raised by some very unusual nuns, was having a terrible day. Fired, broke, and dumped all in a matter of hours, she was licking her wounds while watching TV.

Things immediately got so much worse.

She was abducted, replaced, and yanked across the universe by the powerful Interstellar Exploratory Service so they could observe events on Earth. Adding insult to injury, they declared her life worthless, voiding her compensation in the process, and dumped her in a lifeless hulk floating in an asteroid belt on the very edges of known space.

She had one thing to help her. A small orb containing nanites under the control of an AI that Nellie named Lucy.

The two of them worked, invented, and struggled to create a working ship from the wreckage. They succeed with Lucy’s guidance and a few upgrades to Nellie’s body. However, escaping the asteroid belt was only the first of many challenges they faced.

Nanites, especially ones controlled by an AI, are wildly illegal everywhere. To be discovered is to be killed.

Nellie has no identity documents, no ship registry, nothing.

Her saviors at mining station MOG-Five rapidly turn out to be scheming pirates who intend to use her for their own purposes, and only her wits and nanite advantages manage to keep her out of their clutches.

As events heat up, Nellie’s nascent transport business is put in peril as she is framed repeatedly by MOG-Five.

The pirates arrange an ambush in the asteroid belt where she first arrived in the sector, only to discover the true power and inventiveness of the Nanite-built ship and its Captain. Fighting off the attack with hit-and-run tactics, Nellie survives long enough for Sector Security to arrive.

MOG-Five’s schemes are finally revealed, but Nellie ends up face-to-face with the head of Sector Security, Sheriff Bartlett.

Narrowly escaping suspicion, she returns to her only friends in the sector at FIG-Seven. The foundry is her base of operations in the area, and her new friendship with Crush-Cha, a Brackta Dockmaster, is her key to a steady stream of work.

Her comfort with the station encourages her to take a troubled young engineer, Paren-Far, on a trip to the Hub. The light-fingered, sarcastic, and bold teen reminds her of the orphans she grew up with, and the two form a friendship as they travel to the center of trade in the sector.

Even Lucy, pretending to be a robot on board, likes the girl. They deliver her to her waiting aunt and uncle, and even manage to take a job on the sparsely populated planet.

The simple delivery to a Forward Exploratory Base rapidly turns into a search and rescue mission that introduces Nellie to the awful Abomi-Toads. These horrific creatures, somewhere between a toad at the back and a lamprey-like mouth loaded with paralytic venom at the front, prove no match for Nellie and Lucy.

Riding the high from her successful rescue and having arranged a job for her new friend, Paren-Far Nellie returns to the Foundry, only to be drafted into an all-out attack on MOG-Five by Sector Security.

Nellie boards the mining station with Crush-Cha as well as Prit-Mal and Bix, both of station security on board the foundry. While battles rage throughout the station, the team makes their way to the control room, and Cush-Cha reveals himself to be an expert with computers, command, and more.

Happy to take a back seat and not draw attention, Nellie goes to verify the identities of the dead in a cargo bay. Something tells her that more duplicity may be at play than they know.

The counterattack proves her right, but as she is blasted out the airlock, Nellie can’t quite muster any ‘I told you so’ joy.

Emergency upgrades are performed and Nellie manages to work her way along the outside of the station and clamber back in through one of the lower levels.

As she fights her way back toward her team and safety, Nellie saves a young security officer named Tor-Am.

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Together, they fight on, only to face things they can not overcome. Nellie ducks away and upgrades her weapons with nanites before returning to the battle.

The cost of that upgrade is immediately evident as Tor-Am fires a bullet directly at Nellie. The bullet hits the shielding over her forehead, and the terrified security officer continues to attack as she rants about nanite nightmares.

Nellie eventually manages to talk Tor-Am down, only to realize the risk should the woman mention her thoughts to others.

Unable to take that risk, Nellie kills Tor-Am. Stunned and traumatized by both the attack and her own actions, Nellie fights back to her ship, the Bly’s Fortitude, and waits out the rest of the fight.

===<<<>>>===

While clearing the scrap around the station in the aftermath of the battle, Nellie buries herself in work until she is suddenly ordered to land and surrender.

Nellie refuses and is attacked.

Crush-Cha proved to be much better at bringing the mining station back online than she thought. Her nanite-powered changes to her gear and the murder of Tor-Am were both caught on camera. The friendships and trust she had built up were destroyed in a moment. The entire sector is hunting her, and most of the armed ships are still around the station.

Nellie uses the wreckage of a larger ship and a scavenged drive to escape the area while she and Lucy scramble to find a way to escape the sector.

Going dark and turning off power, they try and sneak by the Hub world, only to be tracked by a destroyer.

The Bly is destroyed around her as they dive through the atmosphere, looking to escape. Lucy harvests what she can to create a small suit of nanites to hide Nellie as she is ejected from the ship just before it is completely destroyed.

Freefalling through the air, Lucy uses the Nanites as a wingsuit and flies them away from the explosion.

They fly for what feels like hours as they try and find somewhere to hide.

Before they can, the giant saucer that is Bartlett’s command ship arrives, and huge beams slam into the planet.

Caught in the blast wave, Nellie loses consciousness. She awakens to find Lucy doing everything she can to keep her alive. She has lost an arm, both hands, one leg, and even half her face in the explosion and crash.

She is dying.

Lucy activates emergency measures, and nanites swarm through her body. Her gear is cannibalized to build her a new arm, leg, and hands; even her face is replaced with nanite skin.

As she stumbles away from the site of her rebirth, Nellie sees the powerful beams of the capital ship have scoured a good portion of the planet’s surface.

It is devastation beyond anything she could even imagine.

Swearing to never take the risk of being discovered again, heavy with guilt, Nellie stumbles off into the wilds with no plan other than to survive.

Over the next few days and weeks, she attacks animals to recover her flesh and regrow her face. She and Lucy come up with new gear. Gear that looks native to the area, nothing that would mark her as having nanites. A complete change of appearance for Nellie is completed thanks to her new nanite-altered face.

With time and a few misadventures, Nellie makes it back to the hub and sneaks in. Lucy implants a new identity for Nellie only to discover that Paren-Far had been arrested for speaking out in Nellie’s defense.

Unable to leave the girl to her fate, Nellie and Lucy go to the rescue. They arrive in time to save Paren from the prison guards who intend to assault and kill her. Leaving dead guards behind, they escape with the badly injured Paren-Far.

Paren’s injuries turn out to be worse than they could have guessed.

The teen had stolen the wrong thing, getting a look at weapons she was never meant to see. That was what had led to her imprisonment, and her interrogation left her half paralyzed, and the paralysis was spreading.

While Nellie and Lucy agonize over whether they should save Paren by converting her into a Drone with nanites, the brave teen decides her own fate.

She slits her throat with the deadly nanoblade she stole from Nellie.

Unwilling to let Paren die, Nellie activates the conversion process. In the process, she removed the last safeguards and lockouts on Lucy’s program.

===<<<>>>===

Paren awakes, still very much herself, other than the complete inability to ignore an order from Nellie.

While Lucy explains things to both Nellie and Paren, they prepare to take the next step.

The nanites remake Paren’s body from a Brackta into a younger version of Nellie’s current look. With the new cover of being sisters, they go to a nearby small town to get supplies.

Nothing ever goes quite according to plan for Nellie, and this is no exception. Before they know it, Nellie now owns a Ship Graveyard.

The locals are not exactly welcoming, assuming that Nellie and Paren are con artists, but they manage to smooth things over.

The next time they enter town, they find it deserted, with all sixty-odd residents gathered around a screen at the far end of town.

Much has happened while Nellie was in the wilds. The sector was declared locked down for the next year, and somehow, a war started. What makes it worse is the border sector is of no interest to the owning United Sector Alliance.

They abandon the sector to the invading United Federation of Peoples.

Sheriff Bartlett refuses to abandon the sector, and a battle rages in orbit as the planet watches.

The saucer is destroyed, and half of it falls from orbit, crashing just over the horizon from the stunned small town.

Claxons sound, the sector has fallen. As panic grips the small town, Nellie looks around and wonders how to ensure Paren and her survive.

Or could she do more?