[Moose]


    ‘I need some scissors.’


    He idly pressed the forward thrust button until the asteroid was even with the reticle, then cancelled out the momentum with a reverse thrust. Not that it mattered. The collection drones didn’t need the ship to be in a specific spot, just close enough to make the trip. He liked to move the ship when he could though. Getting practice manually moving something this large was bound to come in handy eventually. It meant he could scoop the smallest asteroids himself as well.


    Which was much faster, even if the ship complained about possible collisions.


    Absently scritching the head that appeared under his other hand, he watched the drones dismantling the larger chunks of the rock that they couldn’t fit through the collection area on the ship. Reading the information on the panel before him was still out of his reach, but he had managed to identify which parts were the ‘elements’ found in the asteroid. It was probably a breakdown of the ore or alloys in the rock, but it gave him an idea of what the colors on the panel meant.


    It seemed blue was something needed or used by the ship, red was slag or waste rock and orange and purple were… something. He was pretty set on them having to do with value, but what exactly they depicted he wasn’t sure. His current plan was to use purple as high value, just because of the whole royalty dye thing. It didn’t really matter in the end, since he couldn’t communicate what he had or what he wanted for it, but it gave his practice more meaning.


    ‘I can deal with long hair I guess. The ends curling is annoying, but not a huge thing. It’s the beard that is quickly leaving behind caveman and approaching ‘living thing actively trying to choke me’ that is the problem.’


    He glanced at the progress bar, that he was currently attempting to work out the purpose of, go up. It lasted after the rock was gone, so not a collection progress. His best guesses were either refining or internal movement of whatever was collected. Both were good to know.


    He had yet to experience any difference between FTL and normal space. That meant he could probably rule out dimension hoping and wormhole travel. There didn’t seem to be any instant movement or change of location. Folding space was still a possibility, he supposed, but it was probably a more mundane method. Either simply ignoring lightspeed limitations somehow or a gravity wave type of device. That or something really exotic that he simply didn’t have reference for.


    The drones finished up with the rock he had targeted. He had found this one that seemed to have a lot of water ice and what he was pretty sure was elemental gold. At least that was what he got from the display, alongside the other incomprehensible bits. Water seemed to be the thing that got ‘used up’ according to the readouts, probably for either power or non-FTL propulsion. Maybe both.


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    That was both good and bad, as far as he was concerned. It meant they wouldn’t run out if they stayed still, but they couldn’t go find more if they ran out. It was something he was keeping a very close eye on.


    Once the drones flashed a pop-up that he was treating as an all clear, he started maneuvering the ship back towards the direction he had planned out.


    ‘I sure hope it’s the next one. If someone had told me that I would be worried about running out of stars, I would have laughed at them. Or demanded to know how I got into a spaceship in the first place. Hmm, no, yea, definitely the second one first.’


    It didn’t take him long to get the ship pointed in the right direction, then it was just waiting for the progress bar to finish. It was probably fine to jump now, the ship had never sent up a complaint and probably would do whatever automated things it had to regardless, but he liked to be extra careful. Seeing as they lacked a mechanic. Or just anyone fluent in the languages. Or really any part of the hundreds of crew he expected would be needed for a ship this size. The robots help immensely, but he didn’t kid himself into thinking that was a long-term solution.


    His practice did give him plenty of time to think. He even managed to get some things translated while he was waiting a few times. His navigation plan was also something he had come up with while he was sitting here watching the ship do its thing.


    He didn’t know where their newest passenger’s friends had gotten off to. They likely could read their map and just jumped straight to wherever the help was. He had just assumed that they went in the direction they had been facing, seeing as how there had been less than an hour and no real reason to do any kind of crazy maneuvering. He took the heading of his ship and plotted out all the stars that were in an absolutely straight line. That had probably been a mistake, a little divergence likely wouldn’t matter to the FTL drive, but it was the only way to narrow the possibilities. Once he had jump data for all of them, he had stuck the first one in the flight computer and off they went.


    That had been several stars ago and the jumps weren’t quick.


    On the plus side, that did at least give the girl a chance to not cower at every little movement. He didn’t really blame her, when everyone around you could seriously injure you by not looking where they are sitting, he would cower a bit too. The girl barely came up to his hips and that was only if she was really trying. His paranoia of being turned into a giant had resurfaced hard once the dust had settled. Though that did raise questions of why Kitty was so much bigger than the other girl.


    As his scritching fingers brushed an ear that flicked away, his mind stuttered a bit.


    ‘Wait, wha….’


    Looking down he spotted the tiny girl in question. She had a complicated look on her face and ruffled hair on her head.


    ‘Crap. Has she been here the whole time? I thought that it was Kitty being strange again. I am going to have to find a way to apologize.’