"To tell you the truth, Doctor, when I set out, I did so to find a way to make amends for what I had done—despite the anger that led you to banish me from your facility," old Urgan began.
"A peace offering? You thought I'd just forgive you, did you?"
"I wanted to at least try my luck to see if you could forgive me."
"And what did you do in the meantime?"
"First, I thought about going to TerraGorh or TerraNova. I thought I could join the Exosanguis, become a relic hunter if necessary, to smuggle alien remains. With a valuable alien relic, we could have upgraded this facility by several levels. Then I realized I was far too obsolete a robot for that and would probably kick the bucket on my very first day of fighting relic-hunter robots."
"I wish you had tried," Sevda said with furrowed brows.
"Ah… please don't act like you want me dead. You're hurting my scrap heart." The old man swallowed and continued. "So, I planned to go to the colonies of the Maxerth Vilian fugitives and rummage through the wreckage there, but I was attacked by Scavengers."
"Maxerth Vilian wreckage?" Sevda said in surprise. "You found one of those small colonies established by space outcasts? And one where the wreckage hadn't been looted yet…"
"No Maxerth Vilian colony is 'small,' ma'am. And in case you didn't know, the probability of finding something valuable in those colonies is equal to the probability of finding a plant that lived on the Old Earth. No one cares about those wrecks. Only the poorest go there in the hope of finding a treasure."
"If you're going to Maxerth Vilian colonies, you're either starving to death or you're the most outcast beings in the universe and they call you a Scavenger. Anyway… what was I saying? Ah… yes… When three Scavenger ships started chasing me, I threw myself into the infinite void of space. I was chased for a while because this damn scrap of a spaceship needs half an hour for the engine to warm up before it can make a hyper-jump. No, I am absolutely not complaining about the ship you sacrificed your own savings to buy for me. In fact, I am deeply grateful for the sacrifice you made. It's just that the ship, which is as much of a wreck as my heart, almost caused both our deaths."
"During those hours when I was face-to-face with death, perhaps for the first time since my birth, great luck smiled upon me. The signals of a Weapon Security convoy were visible from a point not too far from me. As I approached the Weapon Security convoy, the Scavengers were still following me. Finally, the Scavengers vanished as soon as they saw the SWR (Supreme World Republic) signal."
"It didn't take me long to realize this was a prisoner transport convoy. Four J4-U fighter ships were deployed around that prison ship, whose massive hull stretched forward like a broom cutting through the void. As soon as I saw the J4-Us, I almost screamed with joy like a child seeing a cartoon hero in real life. I had only heard stories of those damn technological marvels. These spaceships, with four wings, eight engines, and the ability to fire electric destruction cannons, could quickly approach any ship and easily neutralize it with an EMP blast; they could hunt down any kind of vessel."
"'But old man, why would a fighter ship be assigned to protect a convoy?' you might ask. That is actually a very valid question. Because fighter jets are usually useless for protection duties… But you couldn't find a tracking power greater than the signal-tracking capability of J4-U ships within the SWR Network. These ships, which can detect even a spaceship in the middle of a hyper-jump, could pick up the signal of a ship even daring to approach the convoy from an unimaginable distance, hunt it down in seconds, and return."
"The moment I saw myself approaching them with a scrap ship, one of the J4-Us blew the Scavenger ships to bits and returned. They were that fast… They saw my scrap ship and connected to it, sending a signal to my vessel which carries your name in its ID. According to them, the officer of that convoy was a big fan of yours. Specifically, his wife, who is also an officer like himself, watched your programs and the truths you voiced about the colonies with admiration and felt great sympathy for you. Officers… perhaps they are the only ones who know the truth and seek it because they have seen war. That's why they allowed me to take refuge with them as soon as they received the signal of my ship fleeing from the Scavengers."
"Everything was going great. I wasn't quite sure where my next destination was. I was burning with the desire to present you with a gift that would redeem me. Maybe I'd get a precious mineral from one of the END colonies. Or maybe a black-market part from one of the CLAUDIS colonies. Plans were spinning in my head one after another, and I felt like my brain was turning to mush."
"While I was moving quite far from that transport ship, suddenly, with space being torn apart by a white light, I saw a massive beam hit the convoy ship. It was the first time in my life I had seen such a weapon. This beam, which almost bent space-time as it was fired, had opened a huge gash in the transport ship's hull. While explosions occurred one after another, the J4-U ships, dazed as if they had just woken up, maneuvered toward the direction the beam came from."
"Where the beam had exploded, a stain remained, as if a white ink blot had been thrown into space. If that was a spaceship, how had the J4-Us not noticed it? Or was it a mine? Amidst all these questions, while I was stunned, fierce orders were raining down from the officers for me to get away from there and disappear with my ship."
"Before my eyes, thousands of people were dying from lack of oxygen or the effects of pressure. While trying to find my way through the wreckage of the spaceship and the people dying in agony with their organs mangled, I came across a man. Despite being covered in wounds in the void of space, the man was moving. He jumped off a piece of metal and tried to grab a weapon. A cybernetic guard was lying unconscious from the impact; the man tried to touch the guard's weapon but was thrown backward by an electric shock."
"From the blood that froze as it flowed off him in the void, it was clear this man was not a cybernetic. But the fact that he was still breathing—that was the miracle. He jumped from metal plates and tried to reach a weapon locker this time. While he was tearing apart the weapon storage with his powerful arms, he was thrown meters away by a powerful explosion in the hull of the spaceship. But as he was thrown, he dragged the locker he had just torn open—the weapon he needed—along with him."
"He took a revolver from the open lid of the weapon locker and climbed onto the spaceship. His arm had frozen and shattered from the cold, but he didn't seem to care; with his weapon in his mouth, he was dragging himself toward the cockpit with his one good arm. While the cybernetic prisoners were being executed one by one by the officers, this non-cybernetic man could move secretly toward the cockpit because he wasn't detected by radars."
"When he reached the cockpit, he took the weapon from his mouth into his one intact hand and began firing at the glass repeatedly. While the cockpit crew, unaffected by the explosion, hugged each other in great distress, I watched what was happening as if I were watching an action movie. It was like an epic action movie scene…"
"What happened next? One of the officers, who had jumped from one of the J4-U planes and surrounded the ship so the prisoners wouldn't escape, hit this man with a rocket launcher. Yes… it surprised me quite a bit to see that huge rocket struggle out of the launcher in an atmosphere-less environment and suddenly accelerate to hit this man. When this madman was thrown into the void of space with the impact of the explosion, his face shattered, I didn't want to leave him all alone in the void."
"He had made a tremendous effort to stay alive and escape imprisonment. I couldn't let those efforts vanish so easily. Besides, if someone who isn't a cybernetic can survive this long in the void of space, what is it if not a miracle? I really wanted to bring such a miracle to you. I thought maybe you'd want to take his body parts. That's why I caught that man in the void and brought him here immediately."
Sevda had listened to the whole story carefully. She didn't even know what judgment to reach. This old madman Urgan had become the protagonist of a one-in-a-million story just to redeem himself. For Sevda, this old man had stolen a prisoner from a convoy—and a prisoner at the brink of death at that…"
"If…" the young woman said. "…if you really stole this man from a convoy, then… maybe we should check the news."
When the young woman pressed a button on the charging station, a massive screen descended from the ceiling. On the screen, there was a headline in giant letters: "A Treacherous Attack on a Prisoner Transport Convoy: Is the Weisshafen Family Responsible?"