This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/McBoobenstein on 2026-04-01 21:42:53+00:00.
Much thanks to u/KyleKKent for allowing me to play in his world.
----------------( Imperial Dock 13-AA, Imperial City Starport, Serbow - 1400) ----------------
Lieutenant Commander Kayden “Sempai” Morgan was on his honeymoon. He had to keep reminding himself of that as he crawled under the kitchen counter to clean built-up dust out of the storage. Finally finishing up, he got to his feet, brushed off what had been kind of nice civvie clothes at one time that day, and looked around for everyone else. There was a small group of ladies gathered around the table, tapping at what looked like more black chrome panels built into the long teak-looking table. He heard discussions happening in one of the three bedrooms that had been discovered. He figured the bedroom could wait; he wanted to see what had been discovered in this thing’s computer systems.
“Hey, ladies. Did you find anything interesting?” Kay tried to seem nonchalant about it, but the whole ship was a mystery. And Koga claimed it was void-ready, which meant they had a decision to make before too long. “Are those computer panels?”
Kendra looked up and sniffed a bit before sneezing. “Ugh, yeah. Scoot back, dusty dick. Making me sneeze.” He obliged her sensitive nose by taking a few big steps to the right, further down the table, but away from her. “Thanks, hun. Now, we’ve found a basic computer system, but it’s being a bit more evasive than I thought it would be. It needs something to get it going, and I don’t know what.”
Kay looked down at a similar panel to the one the ladies were gathered around. He gave it a poke and a little green circle under his finger lit up. The screen became active after that, sort of. He swore he saw a digitized face look out of the screen at him, but he had blinked at the wrong moment, and he couldn’t be sure. “The fuck?” The screen brought up a simple login box over a background of the Apuk Arms logo. Or what Kayden assumed was the logo, as the company had been defunct since before his great-grandfather had been born. His curiosity got the better of him, so he entered the login information for his communicator to see if maybe someone had loaded his info into the system. The screen went dark for a second, and then his communicator beeped at him in a very new set of tones. The women working around the other screen all looked at him, as they hadn’t heard that ringtone before either. Cara and Lori came running out of the bedroom they had been investigating and looked around excitedly.
Cara was first to shed light on their actions, “Who got the system to work? That was the old Apuk Arms ad jingle! They played it constantly in the Apuk Arms section of the museum.”
“Oh… Oh no.” Kayden pulled his communicator out to look at what was on the screen, and there were just two words in the same color tones the Apuk Arms logo was in.
“Stupid monkey.”
“Well, I think I’ve made some sort of contact with the computer system… I don’t think it likes me, though.” Kayden held his communicator out for everyone else to see, and Lori giggled when she saw it. Cara didn’t find it near as funny, though. She walked up to the table and jabbed a finger at one of the blank displays. The display momentarily lit up under her finger like it had for everyone else while Cara continued being peeved at it. “You be nice to my husband, you hear me?” The screen under her finger blossomed into a full control display for the ship and its components.
A digitized voice came over speakers that were hidden around the room. “Yes, Captain Vrin. I will apologize to your husband. I am very sorry for assuming you were stupid when you gave an unknown computer system the login information to your communication device, monkey.”
Elise was the first to break the shocked silence. “Are you fucking kidding me? Cara, you haven’t touched a single screen in this rig till right now, have you? And it’s got a damned sim-int stuck in its core! That thing’s gonna be hell to try to dig out.” The screen Elise was nearest to blinked off and ceased responding to further pokes.
The digitized voice came back over the speakers. “I am a necessary part of this ship, Ms. Gohb. I will not be dug out of anything, thank you very much. Captain, you do have business to attend to if you have a moment.”
Cara was still a bit shocked, “Um, yeah. What do you need, um, Sim-Int?”
“Well, the first thing is my name. The transponders are currently broadcasting the previous name of this ship. I assume you no longer wish for me to be broadcasting ‘The Tuggin Boat’ as your ship’s name, Captain.”
Kayden started laughing at that, and a few of the ladies were trying not to giggle. Cara was getting more and more confused but understood that she needed to name the ship something other than ‘The Tuggin Boat’. “Um, The Dragon?”
Somehow, the digitized voice managed to sound both very polite and exasperated at the same time. “Captain, there are currently five other ships docked at this spaceport alone named The Dragon. I respectfully request you add at least an adjective to that name.”
“Sassy ass sim-int. Figures.” Sima was tapping the wood part of the table with her claws. “If we were gonna get saddled with a simulated intelligence, it had to be sassy.”
“Captain, if you need assistance picking an adjective, I would like to suggest a thermal theme, as it would match the thermal transfer systems that have been criminally underutilized on this production design ship.”
Kayden suddenly sat up, along with Elise, Kendra, and Mary. Mary groaned a bit at the sudden movement and went back to relaxing. Kendra was the first to voice the concern that those who knew what those words meant were feeling, “Hold up, what the hell do you mean by “production design”, the LST-1530 went to production already, hundreds of years ago. How fuckin’ old is this thing?”
The digitized voice didn’t come back with a response. Kayden paused and then figured it out. “Oh, weird. The sim-int is ignoring everyone but Cara right now. I think it’s still huffy about Elise saying we were gonna dig it out of the system.”
Kayden’s comm-unit chimed the Apuk Arms ad jingle again. When he looked down, the screen simply displayed “I do not get ‘huffy’, monkey.”
“Ok, the thing is ignoring everyone except Cara, and snarking at me. Cara, hun, we have an assload of questions, and this sim-int seems to be in possession of the answers to most of them. So, give it a name, and then register us all as crew so we have admin privileges when it’s deciding it doesn’t like us.”
Cara nodded and looked to be giving the name some thought. “Thermal adjectives would also be rather common, this is Serbow after all. A good portion of ships probably have names related to warfire already.”
The unnamed sim-int responded, “Exactly 12% of the ships currently docked at this spaceport, Captain.”
“I think it would be helpful to know what these thermal systems are that you want the ship named after. Also, please answer the question put forward by Kendra.”
“If by Kendra, you are referring to the vulpir female, then the answer to her question is that this ship is not an LST-1530. It is the production design model of the LST-1545, designated the Flame-Back. And if the system update date is correct, then this ship is 152 years old.”
Lori sidled up to the table, poking at one of the screens. “Apuk Arms was dissolved almost 150 years ago. This ship should have been scrapped, unless the design itself was bought by whoever was purchasing portions of the company.”
Cara rolled her eyes, as the sim-int deciding it was only going to answer to her was getting old. “Ship, who purchased you when Apuk Arms dissolved?”
“No one initially purchased this ship, Captain. The night before I was scheduled to be destroyed, someone that has been erased from my memory core stole the ship and hid it on Soben Ryd for 50 years. It was then put up for auction in an estate sale, and the person who purchased the ship at the auction had papers forged for its registration and transponder replacement. That owner has also erased themselves from my memory.”
“I wonder how many of its owners it actually remembers. Sounds like this thing is hotter than Chili competition night on the Dauntless.” Kayden leaned against the table.
“Incorrect, monkey. My papers, which incorrectly list me as a decommissioned LST-1530 Cinder-Back, are now perfectly legal, as is my transponder code.”
“Now how does that work? They can’t be wrong AND legal.” Elise jumped up on her chair and leaned over the table in order to look at one of the screens that was still working.
When the sim-int didn’t answer, Cara grumbled and repeated the question Elise asked it.
“Technically, a loophole of Imperial law. Captain Cara’Vrin was gifted this ship and all property within by the Empress of the Apuk Star Empire, the very same governing body that the ship is registered in. The Empress herself transferred the title of this ship under the originally falsified information, and as she is the highest authority within Apuk Empire space, my registration has been made completely legal.”
“Oh holy fuck…...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1s9yeph/gravity_of_the_situation_oocs_chapter_30/