She was just there, on the hard metallic floor. Her eyes blinked open, fluttering like one of the many lights on the panels around her.
They had a neon vibe, all the colors of the rainbow with their meanings and warnings. Hers had none, hidden behind the nanolenses of her suit, isolating her from head to to from the outside environment.
Her mouth was exposed though, and she let out a silent sigh. Good morning - she thought to herself, used to waking up on the floor by now - it's not cold - she realized running a gloved finger against the shine steel - well it probably is cold, but...
She tried to break the chain of thought - too grim, too early - she brushed aside. Of course the metal was could to the touch, but the suit wouldn't let her feel it. She would not let her feel it. Not cold, not hot, nor anything in between. And gods, she missed the cold. The wind howling thought her long hair, the smell of salt water invading her nostrils, enough to taste the sea from the top of the cliffs of her home planet, a backwater station half way to nowhere.
But for a few months now her pink, soft skin had known few more than the constant mix of compression and warmth, like only a military grade space nanosuit could give.
A refurbished, hacked, almost too tight to breathe nanosuit.
The best technology for the ultimate war amongst the stars, finished some half century before she was even born. Or grown. She wasn't sure what clones were, birthed or just farmed, but she knew she was one. They have told her as much. She have told her as much, time and again.
A blip on her HUD brought her attention back to the present. Two arrows pointing backward, instructing her to turn around. The girl rose and tried in vain to rub her eyes, only to have the lenses tensing in response like if someone had tried to poke her eye out, forming a sturdy shield preventing her to touch her own face. She blinked in response and shook her head to chase the sleep away, approaching the tiny dots the HUD had revealed were there. Mouse poo.
- Eeew! - left her lips, quickly silenced before her voice could be heard. Better to clean this up fast - she run for a piece of dirty cloth hanging from the nearby bucket, the one she carried with her to that very room before collapsing exhausted on the floor. A bit of cleaning product, one too smelly to have a proper name, and a bit of moping, and those blips vanished from her eyesight.
Stupid thing could spot dust a mile away but couldn't warn her about a rat two meters from her sleeping form. Or it could, but wasn't programed to do it - she considered - If only I could get the control pad...
And again, that was as far as she would allow herself to think - then what? - was obvious. Even if she could access it, and even if her not-so-unique DNA gave her access to all its features, she had never learned that language. And even if she had, there was a reason why her nanolenses were always active.
All the screens, all the panels, all the abundant information flowing around the Griefer were invisible to her, filtered out by a little polarization. The girl could only know what She deemed important, which apparently was reduced to mouse poo location.
There were other reasons besides confidentiality, of course. She dug a little deeper, to the maintenance hatch behind a crate just besides the now clean area, to find a couple of lost screws and a whole the size of a small fist in the grate beyond. Acid, she considered, although how and when a blob of acid could have flown there she had no idea, but the burning on the sides of the hole left little room for doubt.
Perhaps someone shot a acid blooded alien years before. Or some sort of acid gun missed its target during the war. Or perhaps space rats where different the ones from the little farm she grew in. She shrugged and reached out, now glad for the catsuit that could protect her from acid, aliens, guns and mice alike. A tiny crumb of - cheese, perhaps? - came with her fingers, spoil lost for the rogue rodent.
Her eyes set a second longer on the moldy piece, and the HUD tracked her pupils in response. Not enemy, not friend. Not weapon, not precious, not unique. Nothing worth of such fast AI, labeling the artifact as food. But it wasn't her time to eat, and that wasn't the allowed way to eat, so before the girl could realize the suit closed over her mouth, fibers of the nano-metamaterial interweaving quickly to seal everything but her nostrils.
Like I would eat such disgusting trash - she thought insulted. But it wasn't personal, just programing.
And her stomach did rumble in response. How long ago was her last meal? Away from orbit, away from any star, the only way to track the passage of time was to look at a clock, any computer screen would do. If only she could see them.
But her punishment would end soon, it had to. There was a limit on how long one could endure starvation. Last time it took almost two days, but since then she had complained and She reprogramed the suit to form a permanent corset around her waist - So you don't feel so empty inside anymore - she teased. But indeed the damned thing had robbed her some of her appetite. And of her breath. And mobility to properly bend, like she needed now to properly clean bellow the toolbox bench and to dive under tables and dust hanging cables that were patched up on an emergency fix that became permanent for no other reason than 'no one else around to fix it for good'. The Griefer was full of those.
But somehow She didn't mind the patchwork, the hacks and the impression of impeding explosive decompression. She was good at what she did, outgunned outlaw, maneuvering the Griefer in and out of situations like one wouldn't believe. Which make she, the girl, think that all of those loose cables and trembling pipes where just for show, a deception she had to pretend to care for while in reality that stolen ship was an engineering marvel.
Not that that little farm clone from a distant planet would now one, even if she was trapped inside it.