Grrl Power #1395 - Iron maidenform (Patreon)

Thank you for the support! You guys and grrls are awesome!

What, indeed is going on? Get ready for the most shocking reveal... no, you all 100% know what the crowd gathered outside of the funnel cake stand is doing. 

The general consensus is that you're not supposed to sell high-tech stuff to people from pre-FTL planets. That said, if someone is on Fracture Station, they have access to some form of FTL transportation, so the vendors aren't exactly required to card anyone, or perform any sort of advanced scan on customers. In the incredibly unlikely event that some STL generation barge drifted into orbit of the station... STL is "Slower Than Light," in case you were flummoxed... If a sub-light ship did arrive at the station, an even that has never actually happened to date, then everyone would probably be okay selling them some engine upgrades, because 1) It's just so unlikely, given the size of space, and to a race with radio telescopes, Fracture Station reads as a really odd, mostly obscured magnetar, so why would you send your generation ship anywhere near it, and 2) by the time you get there from where ever you're coming from, there's a reasonable chance that your species would have developed much faster ships and are already there. That or they might have experienced one of the great filters, like a self-destructive war on the scale that extincted them or at best they're all Mad Maxing it for the last gallon of drinkable water, or they climate changed themselves to death and you're the last of your species. So, heyyyyyy... Congratulations? Have a barely Faster Than Light Engine on us, buddy. And some funnel cakes. The bad news is that Fracture Station is a massive commerce and diplomacy hub, and every remotely habitable planet or asteroid nearby is claimed by someone and the nearest unclaimed place is 7,700 light years away. You know what? I'm going to throw in this Class E terraforming unit, on the house. With that, you might be able to find something workable within 900 light years. 

Digit would very much be at home in a steampunk setting, where people are used to carrying an active furnace on their backs and 120 pounds of assorted brass gears, only half of which actually seem to be connected to anything useful. She's never built anything that a sane person would describe as sleek, but then, she's never had access to a hoverwagon-load of not-quite cutting edge consumer level alien tech before. Which may or may not enslicken her gadgeteering, but it should maybe give her some new ideas. My money is on her building a new, more powerful kind of harpoon with ergonomics that can only be used by someone with tentacle arms. Because it's more efficient that way. If you have tentacle arms. Pointing out that neither she, nor anyone she knows has tentacle arms has about a 12% chance of registering with her. Because it's more efficient, you see.