I’ll start with the conclusion: I’m an idiot.
"……I'm bored."
I groaned, staring up at the cockpit ceiling.
What had I been doing during the flight through hyperdrive?
I slept. I woke up. Then I slept again.
That was the extent of it.
"After all that talk about clothes and food, I can't believe I forgot to buy any entertainment to kill the time."
"I am becoming concerned about the capacity of Master's short-term memory," Lucia said, casting a cold gaze my way.
She was right. I’d been so swept up in the excitement of the Asteria System that I hadn't bought a single movie, anime, manga, novel, or game.
It was all well and good that I’d purchased the Basic Resource Processing Recipe Pack for the replicator, but that was strictly industrial data for shaping scrap metal into ammunition. That was the only new data we had.
As a result, we were once again forced to face the void of deep space with nothing to do.
◇
Putting my regrets aside for the moment, the Sperm Whale reverted to normal space.
Our location was the outer rim of the Ignis System. I had intentionally chosen a sector far removed from our target colony.
With a low hum, the hyperdrive deactivated.
Beyond the viewport lay the same sea of stars I was growing tired of seeing, cluttered here by countless pieces of floating wreckage—a debris belt.
"Coordinates confirmed. Ignis System, near the 4th Planet Lagrange Point L5. We are outside the effective sensor range of the blockade fleet."
"Good. I’d rather not pop out right in front of the enemy and get picked off before I can blink."
I throttled down the main thrusters and switched to inertial navigation.
From here on, it was a stealth operation. To avoid thermal detection, I suppressed our heat exhaust to the bare minimum, letting us drift toward our objective while blending in with the floating junk.
"Now then. I might as well restock on 'bullets' while we scout the area."
I initialized the fire control system and deployed the recovery drone unit.
A hatch on the lower hull slid open, and a swarm of the little drones scattered into the vacuum. Their targets were reasonably sized rock fragments and the remains of discarded artificial satellites.
"Confirmed metallic mass of approximately 500kg at fifteen degrees starboard, distance 800."
"Roger. Send the recovery drones."
On the monitor, the drones latched onto their prey. Using their gravity control units, they skillfully maneuvered scrap metal many times their own weight back toward the ship, where the pieces were sucked into the cargo hatch.
Once I ran these through the replicator to shape them, they would become rounds for the multi-purpose mass driver. In a pinch, I didn't even have to do that much; they were essentially industrial waste, but when accelerated electromagnetically and slammed into a hull, they became perfectly formidable kinetic weapons.
Above all, the price—free—was hard to beat.
"Still, this is a rather plain sight," Lucia muttered, watching the recovery process on the monitor. "You do not look like a mercenary who has accepted a three-million-credit contract. You look like a junk collector."
"Shut it. Local procurement is the mark of a professional."
We continued to gather debris in silence. Rocks, shattered solar panels, crushed containers—after an hour, the mass driver's ammunition depot was reasonably well-stocked between the new salvage and the scrap I’d already purchased. At the very least, I didn't have to worry about running dry in a firefight.
◇
Once the work was finished and I took a breather, my stomach gave a loud growl.
Come to think of it, I hadn't eaten a decent meal since we left Asteria. As I’d lamented before, the only data I’d bought was for scrap metal.
"……Guess I’ll eat."
I opened a sample box for inspection that was secured next to the cargo containers.
Tinkering with official relief supplies was usually a breach of protocol, but I told myself this was a necessary inspection—a taste test. We were about to deliver these to hungry refugees, after all. I couldn't very well feed others something I hadn't tried myself.
Inside the box were the 'Compressed Food Blocks' that made up our cargo. Being intended for war zones, they were products designed solely for shelf-life and caloric density.
I pulled one out and peeled back the inorganic plastic packaging.
What emerged was a gray, rectangular solid.
It had no smell. None at all. The surface was grainy, and the texture felt uncomfortably close to pumice. The hardness… well, it was slightly softer than a brick, if only just.
"Down the hatch."
Steeling myself, I bit into a corner.
A dry, echoing crunch vibrated through my skull. In an instant, every drop of moisture in my mouth was sucked away. Every time I chewed, the block disintegrated into a fine powder that coated my tongue and throat. It was like trying to swallow a mouthful of desert sand.
The taste was a desperately faint saltiness mixed with the powderiness of stale grain. The only lingering sensation was the slight bitterness of vitamins at the back of my throat.
It didn't even register on the scale of 'delicious' or 'disgusting.' This was simply a lump of calories, refined for the sole purpose of preventing death.
"…………"
"Your impressions?"
"……I guess those 'Tasty Cubes' were a luxury item after all, even if they did feel like chewing on wet clay."
I desperately washed the block down with water. My throat spasmed in rejection, but I forced the mass down. At the very least, the Tasty Cubes perfectly replicated flavor and aroma; they had enough 'entertainment' value to trick the brain.
Compared to that, this was an insult to the very concept of taste. It was nothingness solidified for survival.
"To think there are people actually waiting for stuff like this."
"It is indispensable for survival on a caloric basis," Lucia replied flatly.
I swallowed the last of the block and stood up. Strange as it was, eating something that tasted like misery actually fired me up. I wanted to finish this job as quickly as possible so I could go back to eating real food.
"Lucia, what's the status of the reconnaissance data?"
"Collection complete. I have calculated the enemy fleet's deployment patterns and identified a route through their patrol blind spots."
Lucia pulled up a navigation chart on the console. It was a path that wove through the debris belt, using the planet's shadow to mask our approach to the descent point. It was a route as narrow as the eye of a needle, but with the Sperm Whale's thrust and my hands on the stick, we could make it.
"Alright. Let's move."
I gripped the control stick tight.
There was no entertainment. The food tasted like dust.
But the cargo hold was packed with 'ammo,' and I had more than enough motivation.
The Sperm Whale began to glide, weaving through the shadows of the floating wreckage. Our goal lay ahead: the war-torn world of Ignis.
Apparently, there are people in the world who consider staring at the ceiling to be a valid leisure activity for their days off. Terrifying.