Upon Vestia: Chapter Thirty-Three

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"Hey man," James said to Kay, after waiting for a few seconds for the guy to pause his work, and realizing he wasn't going to. "How you holding up?"

~~
"It's my job to care about the books," Ethan said. He tried to look like he had no emotional investment in the state of the library, with moderate success. "Vestia pays me to keep them nice and safe and organized, which they aren't." He watched Esk curiously, "Who put you on janitor duty?"

Yeah, Ethan seemed to be okay now. Having a project to micromanage really did do him good, he liked having something he could be in control of.
"You too," Ethan said, glancing over to Esk. "Thanks for the help," he added awkwardly.

Vestia would use her lights to lead Esk toward the deceased bots.

"No problem." Esk replied cooly, and followed Vestia's directions.
Hmm, maybe all his study was paying off, he was getting better at making people feel better.

Once he got to the bots he set to work examining the wreckage to see if there was anything that could be salvaged. He'd worked on old constantly failing machines a lot in his early life, from the generators back at the inn to the mining drills at the prison colony, he'd gotten weirdly good at scavanging for usable bits.
No, he couldn't build a bot from scratch and no, he probably couldn't repair this mess, but he could at least find parts that didn't seem to be totally screwed to salvage for someone ELSE to use. Maybe he'd even manage to find enough unbroken bits for Mourn to build a few franken bots from.
Who knew?

He was being useful, which was how he managed crises.

Ethan went to work, planning things out. Yes, he could make this library into a proper library, He could make it just right. And as long as he had this project to work on, he could mostly ignore the fact that everything he cared about seemed to be burning away.
He'd research online, find out how to re-bind book covers. He'd plan out each section, print posters to hang on the walls, set up the self checkout counter, and replace his computer. He'd boss the other androids around, get them to move stuff for him. Everything would be organized, fixed, replaced. This, at least, was something he could control.

~~
The bots were somewhat salvageable, there were various metal parts, sensors that hadn't been ruined, motors that could be soldered back into working order. A lot of the bots' computer chips had been completely fried by energy blasts, but some still looked intact.

Esk could probably stay busy salvaging for a looong time if he wanted to.

Vestia would probably send him snacks or something, cause she really appreciated his efforts.

~~
Moriah might decide to go looking for Ivor eventually. She was worried about him after yesterday.

Esk was pretty content to sit here salvaging, unhooking and clipping and desoldering once he got a hold of some tools to do so. He'd sit on the floor and just work, it meant he didn't have to talk to people, didn't have to deal with other people's angst which he was honestly a little too tired to want to handle right now. This was calm, familiar, useful work.

---

Silence was sleeping still, the painkillers she was on made her pretty drowsy and Ivor was a bit too spooked to really explore much. He'd found a room near to the bedroom he and his sister had claimed the night before and was just trying to take deep breaths and block out the anxiety that saturated the ship. He wasn't very good at it.
He was however pretty good at amusing himself with nothing.
He probably looked like he was dozing when Moriah came in.

---

Moriah saw Ivor and hesitated, he looked like he might not want to be bothered. And she knew how easy it was to spook him, she'd seen it first hand yesterday. But she did want to make sure he was okay, so she said softly, "Ivor?"

Ivor's eyes snapped open and he curled into himself almost instantly, blinking a few times and frowning. Oh, just Moriah. "h.. hello...?" He looked nervous.

Moriah winced at Ivor's nervousness. Poor guy, it was so easy to accidentally scare him. Whatever his life before Vestia had been like, it must have been awful. She stayed near the door, not coming any closer just yet. "I just wanted to see if you were okay. I've been worried about you after what happened yesterday."

"i'm... fine." Ivor told her, looking up at her, his expression softening a little. She didn't seem to mean him harm, but not being able to read her mind that was a little difficult to judge. He didn't want to think about yesterday, it had been thoroughly unpleasant.
"Are... are you alright?" He asked. "has it really been ten years? Do... do people think we're dead?"

Moriah nodded. "I'm okay too." She'd been freaked out by all the violence she'd seen, but other than that, she'd gotten away unscathed. "I guess so, it sounds like it really has been ten years. Which means, yeah, I guess probably some people think we're dead." That was a sad thought.

Ivor nodded. "Silence's mother will be sad." He mused thoughtfully. He pulled his feet under himself in his chair and settled a little more comfortably. "The people here are upset, scared... confused. " depressingly those were quite familiar thought patterns to him. "they had people out there waiting for them..."

Moriah nodded. She headed into the room, going over to Ivor. He seemed to have calmed down, so she figured that would be okay. "Yes, there are a lot of people out there who must have missed us. Can Silence send a message to her mom at least? I know it's kind of late, but still, maybe it'll make things a little better."

Ivor shrugged "Don't know. not telepathically, shifters can't communicate across stars like the dragons. Several miles maybe, not this far." He shook his head. "She's.. not really thinking about it. I think.. used to not being with mother now. " He didn't really know, Silence was odd even if you could read her mind. "I wonder if she's still working for the man..." He mused. "Do you have people left behind?"

"I meant in writing, I wasn't thinking about telepathy," Moriah said with a smile. She didn't think in terms of telepathy usually, she didn't have it herself so she kind of forgot it existed most of the time. "Does her mom have any sort of contact address? We could try to find out where she is now." She nodded, "Yeah, there were a few people I left behind. I got in touch with one of them, he was pretty old when we disappeared, but it turns out he's still around." She smiled. She was happy that Daniel wasn't gone yet.

Ivor frowned, thinking. "I don't... think either of them can write." He'd never actually asked, but he'd never seen Silence writing or reading, she tended to stick to her true form and there was no way she could hold a pen like that. "The man might know, maybe we could contact him?" he had no idea Hytar was missing.
Ivor watched Moriah's face, he was trying to work out her body language which was all very very alien to someone who'd spent their whole life relying solely on surface telepathy instead. Smiling that meant happy right? He nodded. "That is.. good yes?"

"Oh, that makes sense," Moriah said. Yeah, maybe it wouldn't be easy to write with claws, hmm. "Yes, we should try to contact that man, what's his name, Hytar? I'm sure he does email or something. If Silence's mom might be worrying about her, then we should definitely try to get in touch somehow."
She nodded. "Daniel was a friend of mine before I was on Vestia. He was very nice to all of us. Mourn did some sort of software fix to make him live longer, and it worked. He's one of the oldest androids ever now."

Ivor nodded slowly "yes.. Hytar... ja.. alt?" He wasn't entirely sure, it was a strange name, a tongue unfamiliar to him. "You can have your lives extended? that seems.... useful. Maybe."

"It's nice, our lives weren't all that long to begin with, so being able to live longer is good," Moriah said. "Vestia, can you help us find Hytar's contact information?"

"I think he'd missing actually," Vestia said apologetically from overhead. She'd heard someone say that earlier. "Sorry, guys."

Rigel walked with Luka, looking around for the others until they got to the dining hall so they could eat breakfast.

"Missing?" Ivor asked, tilting his head. That was... troubling.

---

"this part of the ship is nice." Luka remarked, looking around the dining room. REALLY nice. Damn.

----

Eva offered Shane and Ellie a plate of small fancy cakes that were probably 90% sugar.

"First class, it would be nice to live up here." Rigel said with a chuckle.

~~~
Shane would politely decline the cakes, he did not want to get sugar drunk after all, though he was enjoying the tea.

"Sure, more tea please." Ellie said. She'd probably been drinking hers with waaay too much sugar. "Okay, Esk's not a traitor," she agreed, because Matt was fragile right now and she should be nice to him.
She'd take one of the cakes. Heck yeah, sugar.

~~
"He might be in hiding, from the demons in the other universe or something," Vestia said. "We're not sure."

Moriah looked worried.

Luka smiled "well...we could." She pointed out.

---

Eva nodded and ate one of the cakes herself. "But enough about demons. I do that all day! Tell me about yourselves!"

"what do you want to know?" Matt asked wearily.

Eva looked thoughtful. "adventures? Embarrassing stories about my brother? What you plan to do next? oh! Can I see your ship? I've never seen a smart ship like her before."

Matt blinked. Wow... she was enthusiastic wasn't she? Being out here was probably super boring though.

Rigel chuckled softly then nodded "Yeah, especially while we are fixing up the Devil." The shuttlecraft was so damaged from the fight, though still working thankfully.

~~~
"Our ship is one of a kind."Shane said and gave a small smile. "She's wonderful."

Ellie blinked, this lady was way more curious than she'd expected. "You want to see Vestia? Yeah, I'm sure she'd let you take a tour. She didn't mind your dad visiting either." She snagged another cake. "She's kind of a mess though, I mean she had multiple floors dumped out into space. And the library's uh, not a library any more. It's a hole."

Eva nodded. "I understand it was quite a battle."

"we kicked their ass." Matt nodded.

Eva smiled "good."

---

Luka nodded "Poor old girl." She looked solemn. "We'll get her flying again."

Rigel nodded "Yeah, we will, for now, let's worry about what we are going to eat." He said, getting a plate so they could get food.

Ellie nodded. "Heck yeah, dead slavers." Her expression flickered though, she felt a little queasy remembering the aftermath of the explosion.