Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who came free with the ship
Nia docks to the hulk and launches herself down a few hundred metres of internal corridor, pumped down to near-vacuum, until she finds the section with the power reading.
They're overdue to start the job, but priority still just, just about favours "check the ships for stowaways" over "start on time".
Some dipshit, at some point, modded the ship by cut'n'welding a cargo container to the interior skin of the port plant compartment, squeezed in among the guts of the pre-engine fuel processing machinery. Enviromental maintenance container; not just a rusted-out fucking crate, someone built a jacked-up independent life support shack in here.
Nia swears under her breath, in case she's about to stumble into the remains of some fuck's trafficking side hustle and they're gonna have to report this shit. She toes off the struts, brakes herself with her suit's gas jets a couple of times, circles the shack.
There are power lights twinkling on it. She presses a hand to the exterior in a couple of places, feels the hum of still-running life support. Makes sure her helmet cam is running, steels herself for the squalor of a people-smuggling hole, and cycles through the airlock welded over the container's customs inspection hatch.
The first thing that hits her when the inner door opens is light. The second is the frozen stare of a rail-thin, indeterminate teenager, face dirty, with a small mortgage's worth of interface electronics visibly studding their skull.
"What the fuck," Nia says, then fumbles to turn on the suit's exterior speaker so she can repeat herself: "what the fuck?"
"Hi!" the kids says, hands locked up in surprise, midway through carefully spooning a thick gel out of a tub of some kind of nutrition product. There's a dab of it on the kid's chin. "I'm the pilot!" They twitch their chin a little, in the direction of what's taking up most of the space in here: a full-spec ship's helm rig, which must be wired straight through the wall this entire blister is glommed to, into the ship's main avionics.
"The fuck are you doing in here," Nia says.
"I'm the pilot," the kid repeats, crinkling around the eyes in something like vague worry. "I heard they sold the ship again? Are you with the new owners? I'm the pilot. I come with the ship."
Nia mentally reviews every awful story she's ever heard about belter rednecks and treating their kids like disposable property, which are obviously just trash talk. Obviously.
Oh my fuck.
"You can't be in here," Nia says. "Yeah, they sold the ship — for scrap."
"I'm the pilot," the kid says, like it's the only possibly response, and shrugs a bit. "Guess I'm here till they break her?"
"Kid," Nia says. "They were due to start the chunking laser—" she checks her wristclock. "Twenty-six minutes ago? This job's bleeding money. You can't—you shouldn't still be here. Why the fuck didn't they take you off when they sold it?"
The kid beams, like this is a comprehensible question to answer. "I come with the ship."
Holy oh my fuck, Nia thinks numbly. "You've got a suit, right?" she says. "You — you have a suit for out there? Or in case the atmo leaked on this can?"
"Sure!"
"Come with me."
The kid cooperates easily, right up to the airlock.
"I can't—" They squirm. "That's off the ship. I can't go off the ship."
"How long have you been on board, kid?"
Shrug. "Always. Born on it."
"Yeah but how long—" It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. The ship's changed hands often enough that it's not a question of whether she was abandoned here. I come with the ship. She's been handed around as equipment. And now they sent her here—
"Look," Nia says. Tick-tock. "I'm with the new owners." This is not technically a lie. "On the other side of the lock is a ship, part of the handover inspection, right? I'm — I'm transferring you over. Temporarily. While this gets processed."
The kid still locks up in, Nia thinks, terror, but does at least acquiesce to being gently manhandled into the inspection pod.
"See, it's a ship, it's just a ship," she soothes. It's basically a manoeuvring-capable shoebox, but the kid needs something familiar.
"I'm the pilot," the kid whispers, and slides into the pilot seat before Nia can say not to, and starts looking over preflight.
"Okay," Nia says. "Okay, sure. You're the pilot. Can you take us over to the inspection dock? Right up there. It's in the computer under—"
"Got it," the kid says, and undocks sweet and smooth as — as nothing that's ever really been in Nia's life, but she's heard of things, not like this poor little shit.
They get halfway over before the foreman takes it as an all-clear — which is not strictly procedure, but yeah, damn sure Nia would have called it in if it wasn't — and fires up the chunker. The kid's eyes open like stark white warning indicators as, outside the pod, in clear view, the big scrapping laser starts slicing the ship apart; and then they start screaming.