Kurt gazed outside the window of the Mercurial Witch, the occasional piece of debris floating by. This was nothing out of the ordinary as the pirate ship was passing through the Debris Zone, a floating field of broken tech and reactors. While some people would be freaked out about traveling through such a densely packed part of space, Kurt had gotten used to it during his time mining asteroids.

But Kurt’s longing look into the space beyond the ship was interrupted by the sound of boxes hitting the floor. Kurt turned to see another Human Debris fallen over, floating in the zero gravity with several boxes floating next to them. Kurt just sighed before helping them grab the boxes that they had dropped. Kurt knew that if anyone who was free on the crew spotted this accident, there would be harsh discipline on this Human Debris.

While Kurt didn’t know his name, he could tell that this Human Debris was a few years younger than himself. And frequently these younger Human Debris were treated worse than those who were old enough to do significant work for the Jolly Rogs. So Kurt was glad that he was able to grab all the boxes quickly.

“Thank you,” said the young Human Debris as he took the boxes from Kurt, all the while keeping his head down, “I need to get going. Thank you again.”

And with that, he rushed down the hallway, bringing these mystery boxes to somewhere else on the ship. But Kurt figured that it was none of his business what those boxes were. All that was really his business was piloting, his assigned role on the Mercurial Witch. But those duties were needed as the alarms calling for battle stations came over the speakers.

Luckily for Kurt he was just down the hallway from the hangar. Kurt floated down the hallway as fast as he could, bursting through the doors to the hangar. In the center of the hangar Kurt could see Bosun and Holly, blood floating in front of her. That probably meant that Bosun was in a bad mood. So Kurt tried to sneak past him and float over to his Graze Cosmo.

“Hey, you!” shouted Bosun, “Where the hell were you? You were supposed to be here on standby, not loitering around.”

“Sorry boss,” Kurt replied, just loud enough for the head of the mobile suit squad to hear.

Kurt hoped that he hadn’t been the last pilot to show up, as if he was he could expect a beating when they came back to the ship. But Kurt was used to tolerating beatings, even from before being Human Debris, back at the orphanage.

But Kurt decided to focus on the now, floating up to his Graze. As the cockpit opened, Kurt took a seat in the damaged mobile suit. Clearly Lefty hadn’t been able to fully repair his suit as there were several slashes into its armor and the shield on his arm had a large chunk missing.

But Kurt still thought that it was good enough to go back into battle. Just having a Graze at all was better than some other pirates he had seen. It was with this in mind that Kurt connected to his mobile suit through the Alaya Vijinana System. Kurt gasped as he became one with the machine, a jolt of pain traveling down his back.

But then the pain calmed down, just being a dull throbbing in his back. Once again in control of his body, Kurt put his hands on the controls of the mobile suit. As he waited for the order to launch, Kurt vowed that he would survive this, a vow he had repeated many times since being a child.