Reborn as a Spaceship

PoV Lynn

This auction was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I'd been to auctions before with my parents normally small salvage markets, shipyards with rusting hulls and hopeful bidders but none of that had prepared me for this. Not the secrecy. Not the clinical intensity of the security. I was fairly certain every atom in my body had been scanned, logged, and cross-referenced against at least a dozen watchlists. Even my boots had been tagged with a low-grade containment field until we reached our booth.

If this was legal, it was legal in the same way asteroid skimming was legal: barely, and only because no one with power had bothered to say otherwise or maybe because everyone with power was already in the room.

I hadn't known what to expect. Maybe an opulent hall, gold-trimmed and velvet-lined, or some decadent lounge with personal servers and champagne flutes. Instead, we had a featureless room with just a holoscreen, I guess this prevented any distractions. When the bidding was about to begin, the front wall of our booth faded from opaque black to transparent in a single smooth pulse. We now had a full view of the auction hall.

We weren't alone. The auction hall was shaped like an amphitheatre, a hollowed-out shell of the asteroid, each booth spaced around a central staging platform like the petals of some immense, black flower. Every other booth appeared dark from our side, totally blacked out. Laia leaned in and whispered that it was a one-way screen. We could see out, but no one could see in. A clever design for people who didn't want to know who they were competing against. I was impressed at the lengths they went to for this auction. It served to remind me that this was the big leagues.

I had foolishly believed that 2.3 tonnes of Telk made us rich.

In our world, most trade was done in grams or maybe a few kilograms on an exceptionally profitable haul. Twenty kilograms was a good deal. Fifty was legendary. Two tonnes? That had felt like a fortune. But here, surrounded by booths I could only assume housed the kind of people or entities, who didn't blink at planetary transactions, it felt like pocket change.

I'd expected an auctioneer. Some eloquent, flamboyant figure calling bids, raising tension, pushing prices higher. But there was no such pageantry. The items were brought onto the central platform, displayed in reinforced containment fields or mounted on rotating stands. The bids came in silently, names not attached, just increments climbing in steady, brutal jumps. Each new bid displayed on the central hub in cold white text, devoid of drama. No need for hype. These bidders knew exactly what they were doing.

Lot 1: Stabilized Micro-Wormhole Projector came up first. Allegedly Traxlic in origin. The moment it was displayed, the bidding started at over four tonnes and rocketed to eight before it stalled. Eight tonnes of Telk. Just like that. I leaned back in my chair, swallowing the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. This wasn't a place for bartering. It was a battlefield with Telk as the weapon. During the changeover between product displays, our booth went dark.

Most of the lots that followed came and went just as quickly. Ornamental bio-blades, forbidden pleasure mods, a genetically-modified cat that hissed at high-frequency noise. Distractions. Filler.

Then came Lot 7: Architect Data Fragment. As it hovered onto the stage, I saw Laia tense slightly. The artifact was crystalline, sealed in a containment box that shimmered under the lights with a soft internal pulse. "It's real," Laia said softly. "That's Architect tech. I can feel it. Or something close enough to fool even me."

I braced myself. The bidding started at 100 kilograms. I waited for it to jump, for the usual scramble of competing bids to flood in. But… it stalled. At 300. Laia tilted her head. "Strange. Either they think it's a fake, or too many have been burned before."

On impulse, I submitted a bid of 312 kilograms. Just over the last one. I didn't expect to win. But no one else raised it. Our front window went black. The artifact was ours. The surreal feeling of watching something that ancient, that mysterious, be added to our invoice with the cold finality of a price tag left me stunned. I wondered if there was some interference going on.

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We picked up two more lots in short order. Lot 15: Unlocked Kall-e Genome Sequence, and Lot 14: Compromised NeuroGenesis Executive Comms Archive. Both sold with little fanfare. Just over 100 kilograms each. Ridiculously expensive for classified data… but still a steal, considering what we'd expected. I flagged both as useful for later review, maybe something T'lish could make sense of.

Then came Lot Y: Inert Harmonic Data Device. I leaned forward, hope rising in my chest. If we could acquire something like this, some real Harmonic tech, we might finally take the next step in dimensional engineering.

But Laia didn't share my excitement. She stared at it with narrowed eyes, her avatar's irises rotating and changing colors. "It's a fake," she said flatly.

"You're sure?"

"Partly Harmonic. But the rest is synthetic. Mimicry. Very well done, but not functional. Not aligned." She paused. "It's bait."

Others hadn't gotten the memo. The bidding climbed past ten tonnes before the final bell. I watched it go with a mix of frustration and relief. At least we hadn't wasted anything on it. I now knew how much we would need if a real version came up.

Finally, Lot 178 appeared: Unknown Living Metal. No description. No known function. A small, shifting sphere of metallic strands hovered inside a simple stasis field. It pulsed faintly, reacting to the presence of the hall. The price guide listed it at 100 kilograms.

Laia inhaled softly. "That one."

"You sure?" I asked, hoping she could give a better answer now that she'd seen it.

"I… don't know." Her voice was quiet, almost unsure. "But we need it."

She didn't say it was valuable. Didn't explain its purpose. Just stared at it like it was the only thing that mattered. I hesitated, then nodded. Sometimes, you trust the gut. Even if your gut is an AI in an organic nanite body.

I started the bidding at 20 kilograms. Trying to scoop it up without a fight.

Someone else offered 400 kilograms immediately. A warning shot. I narrowed my eyes. We only had 1.6 tonnes left, and while I was confident Lazarus wouldn't be angry if we spent it all on Laia's hunch, I still didn't want to walk out of here without any Telk.

I countered with 800 kilograms.

They returned with one tonne.

Laia didn't move. Didn't blink. She was completely still, eyes locked on to the object.

"…You're sure?" I asked softly.

She said nothing. Just nodded once.

I resumed the bidding, slowing it down deliberately. 1001 kilograms. Then 1010. Then 1011. Then 1020. Trying to bleed out whoever we were up against. No response. I hesitated, then pushed again.

"1051 kilograms," I entered.

The countdown began. Ten seconds. No counter-bid. Our window went black.

We had won. Whatever it was.

I sat back in the chair, pulse elevated. "I hope that was worth it," I muttered.

Laia exhaled softly, not quite a laugh. "I think it will be."

I hoped she was right. Because now, we had less than half a tonne of Telk left…

The auction wrapped with little fanfare after that well at least from our booth. There were still titanic bids echoing from the shadows, items trading hands for more Telk than some planets could produce in a decade. But we were done. Our list was complete, our account drained, and my nerves stretched thin. But having gotten a taste, I eagerly anticipated more and wanted to significantly increase our Telk supply. Next time I wanted to be a big fish.

When the booth dimmed and sealed once again, we were quietly escorted back to the waiting ship. The vessel still hadn't decloaked; its presence remained a blank spot in every spectrum. Only a voice that was polite, precise, and utterly disinterested guided us through the exit procedure. I was required to verify the bio-lock on our Telk vault, the escort's voice reminding me twice, with passive condescension, to press firmly until the biometric seal was confirmed. We were beneath their attention, but not their protocol.

Once aboard, I finally laid eyes on our acquisitions. Each item was sealed in an individual case, floating slightly in cushioned magnetic fields, pristine and intact. Laia ran silent scans, her face unreadable, but gave a small nod after each. The Architect data fragment glowed softly. The Kall-e genome readout pulsed faintly with encrypted bio-scripts. Even the living metal responded subtly to proximity. All accounted for. All genuine. And all now ours. The Telk deduction matched perfectly with the item logs. With our cargo secured and locked beneath layered authentication, the ship pivoted in absolute silence and started its return to the hub.

Laia seemed more excited now that it was over. "Lazarus is going to want to hear everything." She stated. I for one was just glad nothing unexpected happened. I still wasn't sure how I could explain spending a tonne of Telk on a piece of living metal. But I would Laia take the heat for that one.