1.03

"How go your lessons, young one?"

The apparently innocuous question hung in the silence of the dining room, the tone in which it was uttered underscoring its importance.

"Quite well, Father," I replied. "I am ahead in the sciences, in fact." And behind in economics and piloting simulations. I had trouble understanding the economy of one planet in my past life, and the galaxy was fucking huge in comparison. Plus, even though my new body had much better reflexes than I was used to, they only meant I crashed my simulated ships that much earlier when I reacted badly to another starship cutting the line in a busy spaceport. I didn't say so though; if I'd learned anything in the past month was that honesty was a bad idea.

"As well you should be, Daughter," the tall, aristocratic-looking man with the high cheekbones, long silver hair, and milky white eyes said. "You are the most recent member of a lineage destined for greatness, improved over the generations. Ours are the gifts of genius, superior vitality, and perfected genetics far above those of the average sentient. Scientists, engineers, economic advisors, highly successful merchants; those have been your ancestors for as far back as the line bred true."

Yeah, Daddy Andrim was crazy. Not crazy-insane, but sufficiently advanced arrogance was indistinguishable from madness. If he was not spitting out not-so-subtle racial superiority rhetoric, he regaled me with tales of his mercantile genius, or he pointed out the flaws of my elder half-sister, a product of Mother's previous, supposedly unworthy husband. As far as I had managed to uncover, Jestra Andrim was a smart, competent young woman that, unusually for a member of Kuat's aristocracy, was uninterested in captaining her own ship. Further information on her, even holoimages beyond some older ones in Astra's personal datapad, was mysteriously absent. It was fishy, but my curiosity was tempered by self-preservation; I had more than enough problems to deal with already. Digging into things older members of my House wanted to keep secret was a bad idea.

The rest of the dinner passed in awkward silence. Genius or no, "Daddy" probably had no idea how to interact with young girls, and I had no intention to interact with him more than absolutely necessary. The food, however, was awesome. A dish of fried crustaceans I did not recognize, accompanied by a light sauce and blue cheese for an opener. Actual blue cheese, as it had been made by blue milk, but also fermented like its Earth equivalent. The second dish was breast meat and skin from some equally unknown avian, roasted and cut into thin slices, accompanied by sweet and sour bean sauce and rice pancakes. Last but not least, there was a thick vegetable and meat soup. As expected of Kuati cuisine, it had a strong Far Eastern flavor. Two helpings of every dish were quite filling, though Daddy didn't eat nearly as much. Apparently, while I had inherited enhanced metabolism from him, its full efficiency did not develop until later; for at least another four or five years I'd be looking forward to eating like a professional athlete back on Earth.

Double helpings of really expensive, incredibly tasty meals; I could live with that. Plus, I needed the calories.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

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"Ratty, set up the remotes to level two, increase artificial gravity by another 0.1 standards, with two-thirds repulsorsuit efficiency."

"As you wish, Lady Andrim," the tutor droid replied with a hint of exasperation. She either disliked her new nickname or disapproved of my new activities. She'd had to deal with it; as much as my robotic tutor's feminine personality and aristocratic air had grown on me over the past month, this was the freaking Star Wars galaxy, emphasis in "wars". Not knowing how to defend myself was absolutely idiotic. Fortunately, while the KSS Doughnut might be a merchant ship, it was a large merchant ship belonging to an independent megacorporation with its own defense force.

Luckehulk-class ships were large. To get an idea of how large, imagine a doughnut with a ping-pong ball in the middle; that was roughly the shape of said ship. Now, if the doughnut-Lucrehulk scale held true, remember those mile-long Imperial Star Destroyers form A New Hope? One of those forty-megaton starships would fit one and a half times in the cargo hold of a Lucrehulk... specifically, the relatively small cargo hold that was part of the central sphere represented by the ping-pong ball. One of the decks in the main disc could get up to three square miles in total surface area, and the ship had a lot of decks. It was a vast, cavernous construct the size of a small city, meant to carry all the materials needed by an entire planet for a week across the galaxy. Thus it had taken me nearly a week of searching various maps and an impromptu local geography lesson by Ratty to even find both the room and equipment to address the unable-to-defend-self stupidity. But found them I did, and in the three weeks since then I had seen considerable improvement.

Three training remotes jumped from behind random debris in the small cargo hold. The size and rough shape of motorcycle helmets, they were studded with miniature blaster turrets all over their surface, turrets aiming at me even as their bearers revealed themselves. Refusing to panic, I lifted my own training blaster and shot at the first automated opponent even as I moved. Three weeks ago, I'd never have managed to lift my weapon in time. Two weeks ago, the remote would have fired first. One week ago, I'd have beaten this thing to the punch, only for the bolt to fly wide. Not this time, though. For once, the crackling blue energy of a droid-stunner struck true, and the first remote fell to the ground, dead.

There was no time for self-congratulations as the other two remotes fired before I could line up another shot. Tiny bolts of lightning flew where my torso and head had been only a split second before, sizzling by as they missed by inches. Struggling against the increased artificial gravity and the extra weight of the dark blue bodysuit I wore, I fired again and was rewarded with yet another drone failing. The third remote was still in action, however, and managed to hit me with its second shot. A tiny, harmless bolt struck the suit less than an inch below my diaphragm, and the sinister training device produced a powerful shock meant to simulate being hit by a blaster bolt in the gut. Feeling as if I'd been kicked by a giant, mutated Bantha, I frantically rolled aside while trying to draw breath. The "simulated" shock coupled with the increased gravity made for a bad combination, and I faceplanted on the metal floor only two erratic steps later. The training remote took the opportunity to shoot me twice in the back, the training suit simulating the pain of more shots even as its repulsor-covered surface saved me from breaking bones during the fall.

"Program terminated!"

Ignoring Ratty's smug yet still disapproving comment, I groaned then rolled to my feet. Blasters, the basic weapons in the Star Wars universe, were kinda neat. Firing superheated particles at half the speed of light, they were an order of magnitude more destructive per shot than guns of the same size back on Earth, had minimal recoil, and enough ammo to last for hundreds of shots. No matter how easy they were to fire though, they were still largely useless to anyone lacking experience. Being significantly more expensive for the average person than guns were back on Earth, not everyone could afford one. They certainly couldn't afford the power packs to practice with it. But on a Lucrehulk-class freighter, with unlimited free power available in multiple outputs in the training room to recharge spent cells? I'd shot my blaster pistol over twenty thousand times in the past few weeks, my aim and reflexes steadily improving.

"Ratty, increase artificial gravity by another 0.1 standards, with three-quarters repulsorsuit efficiency." I really did not want to get broken bones during the following hour. "Remotes at the same difficulty level, please."

Learning how to shoot might save my life one of these days, and level-two difficulty was not going to cut it. I had to do more practice now before someone else decided to use me as a target practice...