The Pharaoh's bridge was pretty comfortable. If you think about it, most of our time was spent here, in the dining area of the commons, or in our semi-private quarters. Time was clearly invested in making it a comfortable and relaxing space. Would we rather be on autopilot so we could relax in the commons area? Of course! But my captain's chair was soft and supportive, could swivel or lean back easily, and I had plenty of space for a beverage, snack, paperback book, notebook, you name it. The other stations were the same, personal little bits of functional coziness, with an exceptional view out the front of the ship.

  @zerogstar took over our information post, where normally I would have @foxcutter looking over scans, relaying information, handling digital and organic inputs and outputs. @astrowave was in his normal spot, essentially in charge of weapons, shields, and ship performance. However, if we got into a dogfight with another ship, I would still have primary forward weapon controls so that I could time shots with ship maneuvers.

  I invited @biclops to the bridge as well. I escorted her there after a short tour of the ship and a quick plink reminder to @astrowave to behave and make her feel at home. We needed to function as a cohesive unit to pull off the rescue. Whether everyone actually trusted each other or not, we would have to behave as though we did.

  Sango being Sango, he pawed and yeowled at the door until we let him in. He let @biclops tell him how special and cute he was, snuggling in her lap to make her feel welcome. Then he decided to take one of the two remaining empty stations all for himself. The ship smelled like new. It had that wonderful smell of synthetic plastic and fabrics, and it was mostly crumb and dust free, despite time in the filthy atmosphere of Itokawa. So, I cringed when Sango put three permanent scratches in the brand new seat of crew station four.

  When you have a kitty, you can't have nice things.

  "We need to cat-proof the ship," I said aloud, as I bit into my thin yummy chocolate chip cookie. I cringed again as part of the cookie broke off, and I sprayed cookie bits on the chair, floor, beverage holder, and portions of the display in front of me.

  When you have a @kittyboy, you can't have nice things, I laughed, cursing at myself.

  I looked helplessly at my lap, picking up the larger cookie pieces and munching on the cookie. I'm sure we have a cleaning bot somewhere on the ship, I reflected.

  "How about @ameliascope?" @biclops asked. She was trying out new names. "Or maybe @stephamelia?"

  "@stephamelia sounds like a kind of lizard," @astrowave added.

  "I like @ameliascope," I replied. "But don't you want to be you? Maybe try something completely different. @stephascope has Steph. @ameliar8 has Amelia. Who are you?"

  @biclops closed her eyes and turned her attention to the display on the dashboard in front of her, pensive, before rattling off more names. "@doctorxray, @xrayvision, @thelmameter, @littlelamb?"

  They were all somewhat medical, but I didn't get the last one. "@littlelamb?" I asked.

  "Yes!" @biclops smiled and started singing. "MRI had a little lamb. Little lamb. Little lamb. MRI had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow."

  @zerogstar cracked up. "That's awesome! But I will literally sing that song and pee myself during every examination."

  "I love it," I laughed. "@littlelamb is perfect." I gave her a thumbs-up.

  "I don't know," @astrowave chimed in. "I kind of like @thelmameter. Nice to meet you, Thelma."

  @biclops wriggled her lips and shook her head. "I just don't know."

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  "Well, you have some great options," I offered. "It'll come to you. Takes time. This is all new. You're like a little aiways baby. You can't possibly know who you are yet. I know you hate the name @biclops, but I don't know. It's kind of cool actually."

  She hrumphed at me and continued humming MRI had a little lamb while she returned her attention to the sensor readings, probably monitoring our health as we DEAD jumped.

  I didn't know what to make of her dilemma.

  Most aiways, when they started over, had a vision for the life they wanted. They forked themselves, waking up anew, with their identity kickstarted by that vision. I had no doubt that if I wanted to do that, I'd create a whole set of starter traits and characteristics for my new self, along with an identity. Being in the Alliance Starmada, my superiors would have to approve and might make adjustments, but I could still technically do it. I might even create an onboarding video or message to myself to guide my early days. Doesn't mean it's set in stone, but it's like being your own parent and dreaming up what you hope for yourself.

  @biclops was different that way. She was a merge of two people, plus a new one. If she hated her name, that was already a bad sign, but I wasn't about to say anything about it.

  "We're approaching the last known location of the ship," @zerogstar said.

  "Full alert," I ordered. Not that it mattered since we were all here.

  Our DEAD drive dropped us out of bubble-warp.

  "Sensors," I commanded.

  No ships were visible, but we should be able to follow signatures and determine where to go next. Follow the cookie crumbs.

  @zerogstar was a total rock star if you ask me. @foxcutter was great. @foxcutter was proficient. @foxcutter got things done. But @zerogstar had slotted into the role so easily that I didn't feel like we had missed a beat. She also had no ethical objections to hacking the Alliance Starmada. I was sure @foxcutter could have done it, but @zerogstar was private sector. Hacker vs. hacker, I had no doubt she would have the edge, and for whatever reason, she had thrown her lot in with ours.

  "Was there anything else in the comms you found?" I asked.

  Over the hours of waiting on Eros after my fight with the Shoemaker, @zerogstar had been able to partially decipher several communications leaving Eros. She used my credentials to get into the network, and then followed a path to the regional event handlers that process messages, including local caches that hadn't yet been wiped, and combinations of clear text and encrypted portions of those messages. From there, she found older communications that fit the appropriate pattern. It was just a matter of time and diligence for her to decode enough information.

  Event handlers, she had explained, were a standard technical component at the various FTL relays that beamed signals around the solar system, key to communications, but as we discovered, not fully encrypted in transit, and with metadata stored at rest in the event handler's local cache. A job ran to delete those eventually, so we could only go back so far, but it was good enough.

  We certainly didn't know everything. We still didn't know who was involved from the Alliance Starmada end, if it was a strategic decision among leadership or if it was a rogue actor within the Alliance Starmada. But sometimes all it takes is one piece of information in clear text (not encrypted) to get on the right track.

  "Like I told you before," replied @zerogstar, "just that a human member of the Alliance Starmada was going to be transported, with a timestamp I could cross-reference with registered ships leaving Eros." She returned her attention to the scans, while she continued. "Chatter lit up around the time you said you came back online, so I have a few ideas of the location of the recipients and senders, but like I said, that just points us to Sovereign Starbase. One of the messages came from a ship, Valentine, so I've got the specs and should be able to get a read on it. If you'd let me concentrate."

  I hated just staring at empty space, but she was right.

  "Okay, I've got it," @zerogstar said, excitedly. "Punching in the coordinates for another jump."

  And so it was that we jumped a safe distance to scan again. Valentine's signature would give us enough indication of the direction, but the farther away we jumped, the wider the possible destination became, like a beam of light that got wider and wider the farther away you went.

  We jumped again, coming out of bubble-warp at a distance where we could rescan and search for the ship's signature, then make another high-confidence jump. It was tedious, and we weren't going to gain ground on the ship, but if we stayed on it, we could follow before the signatures dissipated to the point of being unusable.

  The more we jumped, the easier it was for @zerogstar to locate the next destination, as she refined and calibrated the sensors. After the fourth jump, it was mere moments before she plotted the next leap. Lily pad to lily pad, we followed @bitchfrog, each time hoping we would encounter something other than blank space so that we could stage a rescue.

  But it was the pirates who found us first.