Griffin was questioning his life choices as he was forced to listen to the tenth recital of a filthy song in Canto, a language he did share with the drone, about a woman who accidentally went to a port went she'd meant to go to market. As there was no way for sound to travel through the vacuum of space, Otis had obliged himself by hijacking Griffin's short-range radio for communication.
"Will you stop singing that? It's literally right in my ear."
"Not a chance, toilet-pants. Chontooooooooo... Chonta boon shib rykooooo..."
Dealing with an entirely contrary VI was beginning to feel to Griffin like it couldn't possibly be worth it. Each time he'd tried a new approach, it had set off the headache machine. At first the wise-crack responses and sarcastic one-liners had been hilarious, then tolerable, until finally Griff had stopping trying altogether. That's when Otis had started singing. A particularly evil part of his Solstice gift had been to give his puppets boisterous singing voices. Whenever the bots went about their tasks undisturbed, there was a 35% chance that they would hum or sing to themselves. He had laughed himself silly when he populated the playlist with the lowest of low tavern chants and unpublished verses from the large population of soldiers aboard. The youngest Zeskin boy wasn't laughing anymore, and he was dismayed to find himself uncomfortably close to tears. He was only pretending to know what he was doing, and he was probably going die out here the victim of his own foolishness. Why hadn't one of his brothers swooped in to save the day yet? Not that he wanted them to... or did he? He felt so alone. The wound of his mother's loss was suddenly fresh in his heart, and he wished illogically that she was here with him now. He was beginning to crack. Otis began the unrepeatable refrain once more for what must have been the thousandth time.
"Otis, you are the worst birthday gift I ever got."
"I don't even know what to say to you after something like that, Griffin. Just rude."
But it shut up. Until they found the ship.
"That bad boy ain't going nowheres like 'at." Otis chimed in with a deeply offensive rural dialect.
He was right though. In its life the fighter had been a top-of-the-line long-range battle spacer, but this was nothing but its corpse. The hull was shattered in several places, and the entire angular nose of the ship was nowhere that Griffin could see. Otis had been drifting along on his own power, Griff had remembered one or two other phrases to keep the angsty bot from storming off along the way. Now the drone jetted ahead to the ship, a soft glow from one of its left arms as the laser warmed up. The outstretched manipulators reached the ship first, and each took on a life of its own. The fingertips whirred with various tools as the robot began removing panels, resoldering circuitry, and welding support beams back into alignment. The damn thing was trying to fix the ship.
"Otis..." He had been about to tell his companion not to bother, but he could predict the response to that, and he'd had his fill of robot tantrums today. Let it work out its demons while he poked around the wreck. The vessel had employed a quad engine arrangement, each flattened tube mounted at the base of the four curving wings. One of them was a lost cause, destroyed in the explosion that had likely ended the fight, but both thrusters on the other side seemed salvageable. Griffin tethered up beside Otis and began the work of unmounting the streamlined engines.
He had just removed the last locking bolt from the second engine when a small chime warned him that his oxygen supply had dwindled to 15%. He only had about seven hours to find a ship with working life support or he was toast. His hands had begun to sweat inside the gloves of the space suit.
"Forget the third engine, I've got to keep moving." He was talking to himself, having forgotten about Otis in the sudden realization of his own mortality, and was surprised when the bot tapped him on the shoulder.
"You can't seriously expect me to put this back on."
The annoying, beautiful machine was holding the third thrust tube in its other hand, apparently having gone to work on the other side of the ship while Griffin was distracted.
"You took it off? I didn't ask you to do that."
"Shows a real lack of initiative on your part, I think. Seemed like thing to do at the time, though."
"Otis, you're a beautiful man."
"Your mother is a beautiful man."
"Guess I should have seen that one coming by now, huh?"
"Definitely. You are not very smart, Griffin."
Griff wasn't sure how to get the drone to keep following him, so he tethered the engines to himself and started off without a word, making a note to watch out for his cargo when maneuvering. He glanced behind him and shook his head at the sight. Here came Otis, contentedly following along and exacting repairs on the engine as he flew.
It was three hours later when Griffin fell asleep. He'd been awake for 46 hours and was still going strong when the floating, spinning bits of debris and garbage gliding steadily beneath him finally blurred together and lulled him into unconsciousness...
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