The Real Daughter Just Wants to Pilot Mechas - Chapter 1

On the border star system of the Federation, on an unremarkable private spacecraft.

“My dad is the richest man on the capital star?!”

Jiang Momo closed the test report she couldn’t understand and looked up at the old butler who had crossed star systems to come pick her up.

Her eyes were clear and glimmered with light, giving the impression of some harmless small creature.

“Yes,” the butler replied, casually handing her a cup of tea he had prepared before boarding and sitting down on the nearby sofa.

As expected, Jiang Momo didn’t question his nonchalant demeanor. Instead, she cheerfully took the tea and grimaced at the bitterness.

Watching her scowl and set the cup far away with a disgusted expression, the butler’s lips twitched in a faint smile.

Just as they had predicted, a child who had grown up surviving among alien beasts on a desolate planet would display certain animalistic instincts due to a lack of human interaction.

She had never been taught manners. So even in an expensive dress, she sat unrestrained and relaxed, showing no sense of formality. The visible parts of her arms revealed lean, well-defined muscle. Her tanned skin reflected the ship’s lights faintly, not exactly rough but far from delicate.

“How did you find me?” Jiang Momo asked with genuine curiosity, tilting her head like she didn’t notice the butler’s evaluating gaze.

The next second, the ship jolted and a stack of metal parts toppled over.

Jiang Momo immediately sprang up, using both hands and feet to swiftly stuff them back in place.

Her movements were swift and agile. The exertion made her muscles flex with smooth curves.

The butler scooted aside, trying to distance himself from the dangerous junk.

But the whole cabin was packed with metal scraps, leaving only just enough space where the two of them sat. There wasn’t much room to escape.

“Miss, are you sure I can’t take your ‘treasures’ to be recycled?” the butler asked again.

What she had there were already the more presentable items.

The rest of the pile of unidentifiable junk had completely filled the latest spatial compression storage box, capable of holding a thousand cubic meters in volume, that Madam had given him from her research institute.

The butler’s eye twitched as he sighed internally.

If Madam saw all the trash, she might throw both him and Jiang Momo out.

“Of course not!” Jiang Momo shook her head vigorously, eyes sparkling. “You still haven’t told me how you found me!”

She had spent eighteen years on the desolate planet, raised by the AI system of a crashed warship. It was the first time she’d ever learned she had parents. She was so excited she didn’t know what to do.

“The Federation’s inspection team visited that planet twenty years ago. Since it was full of alien beasts and had no intelligent life, it was named a desolate planet. Recently, when the military passed through during a campaign, they found all the beasts had migrated to the far side of the planet. So the inspection team went back to re-investigate and they found a sentient being, you. The team deployed a remote gene scanner and extracted your sequence from a distance. After matching it with the Federation’s genetic database, they discovered you were a child of the Jiang family, so they sent me to bring you back.”

As he lowered his head slightly, the butler met Jiang Momo’s sparkling eyes. It felt like a beam of light had suddenly shot into his own. He instinctively looked away.

“The Jiang family lost a child and never noticed?” Jiang Momo lay sprawled on the couch, one arm dangling over the edge, head turned to look at the slightly sagging skin under the butler’s chin and the perpetually straight line of his mouth since they’d met.

She knew the butler had a bad attitude. Her AI system, Little Eight, had taught her that.

But she was just too excited. She was about to meet her family. Maybe, just maybe, they would be as wonderful as the bedtime stories Little Eight used to tell.

Unable to contain her excitement, Jiang Momo slapped the leather couch with a loud thump. “Woo, this chair is so soft. I like it.”

The butler turned his head but didn’t look at her. “The Jiang family never lost a child.”

Jiang Momo didn’t understand. “But I’m a child of the Jiang family?”

“Maybe there was a mistake at the hospital or some other reason. The Jiang family already has a child the same age as you,” the butler spoke plainly, without hiding anything. “You’ll meet her when we get back.”

Jiang Momo grinned carelessly. “Then when I go back, the Jiang family will have two kids!”

“Four.” The butler struck another blow. “You also have two older brothers.”

“Oh~ so cool,” Jiang Momo sighed.

She didn’t really know what she was sighing about, she just felt like sighing.

The butler looked at the obviously overexcited Jiang Momo and felt an odd urge to knock her down a peg.

Like mentioning that Madam Jiang was a clean freak. If she wanted to be liked, she’d better dump all that junk out of the ship. Or that the second young master clearly resented the newly found sister, so it’d be best not to butt heads with the young lady when she got back…

But in the end, the butler didn’t say any of it.

And Jiang Momo didn’t ask again.

She was feeling a bit hungry, so she pulled out some dried meat from the bundle hidden behind the sofa and started gnawing on it. When she saw the butler watching her, she generously offered him a piece too.

“What kind of meat is that?” The butler didn’t take it. He rested his hands on his lap, raised his chin slightly, and gestured with it.

He didn’t remember seeing any non-toxic, edible small animals listed in the public exploration reports on the desolate planet.

“I don’t remember which alien beast it came from. Anyway, it tastes pretty good.” Jiang Momo bit off a piece, chewing with some effort and continued holding out the meat with her other hand, wanting to share her rations with the first human she had met in days.

It was meat from the tenderest alien beast on the desolate planet. It actually tasted nice.

Jiang Momo’s cheeks puffed out as she chewed and soon swallowed it all down.

Seemed edible enough.

The butler, seeing that, took the dried meat and cautiously tried a bite.

He couldn’t chew through it.

“Is it good?” Jiang Momo tilted her head, watching the butler’s expression.

The butler held the meat in his hand, unsure whether to keep trying and test his jaw strength or just throw it away.

He was silent for a moment, eyes involuntarily drifting back to the defined muscle lines on Jiang Momo’s arms.

He vaguely remembered that besides the absence of small animals, the desolate planet also had very limited edible vegetation. So what on earth did Jiang Momo normally eat?

Looking at her again, the butler had a sudden new realization. If he ignored her naïve expression, her entire presence felt more like a coiled predator, akin to a taut cheetah, not some soft and innocent little creature.

With thoughts racing through his mind, the butler’s tone softened a bit, “There’s no alien beast meat in the capital star’s diet.”

“There aren’t any alien beasts on the capital star?” Jiang Momo scratched her cheek with her index finger. “Then what do you guys usually eat?”

“There are no alien beasts on the capital star. Only the more remote border planets have them.” The butler paused. “The capital star has a lot of food. The yearly output from the farming and livestock planets is enough to feed everyone on the capital star for years.”

Jiang Momo nodded and was about to ask more questions.

The next second, an alarm sounded in the ship’s cabin.

[Warning, warning. Sudden incident ahead. Travel pause recommended.]

The butler cursed under his breath, frowned and tapped his right index finger against the wristband on his left wrist. A semi-transparent holographic screen appeared in the air.

Jiang Momo’s eyes lit up. “What’s that?”

“Light brain.” The butler’s gaze shifted and the display content on the screen quickly changed.

Looks super high-tech. I wonder if I can take it apart and study it.

Jiang Momo stared intently at the butler’s wrist.

“You haven’t registered with the Civil Department yet, so you don’t have citizenship. That means you can’t get a light brain yet. You’ll get one after we return,” the butler said, feeling a chill under her gleaming stare. He subtly turned away and set the screen to private mode. “We’ll need to wait here a while. You can get some sleep.”

“What happened?” Jiang Momo asked.

“This area is full of asteroid belts. The only safe passage is currently occupied by space pirates. We’ll have to wait for them to leave before we can move on.”

The butler was secretly relieved. Good thing Madam had given them a ship with a threat warning system. Otherwise, if they’d gone straight into it, they’d have been perfect targets for the space pirates.

“Space pirates?” Jiang Momo tilted her head, her tone oddly flat.

“Yes. Space pirates operate in even smaller areas than alien beasts. They’re mostly found outside the capital star system. Once we’re back on the capital star, there won’t be any. No need to be afraid,” the butler tried to crack a small joke to ease the tension.

It didn’t work.

The smile on Jiang Momo’s face faded. Her eyelids lowered slightly and her dark eyes looked a bit shadowed. “There’s only one route? I’m in a hurry,” Jiang Momo said.

She really wanted to get to the Jiang family as soon as possible.

Her artificial intelligence, Little Eight, said that parents are the ones who love their children the most in the world, definitely more than it could ever love her.

The butler grew anxious. “There’s no other way! Apart from this route, it’s all asteroid belts around us and the autopilot can’t navigate through them.”

“What about manual piloting?” Jiang Momo raised her hand, lifted the metallic object blocking the path between the cabin and the cockpit and quickly cleared a way.

***

The capital star.

The Jiang family was currently sitting around the dinner table.

The spacious table was lined with all kinds of elegant tableware but the portions on each plate were pitifully small.

Jiang Yingying calmly picked up a piece of vegetable from the shared plate in front of her and placed it on her own plate. With a graceful twist of the wrist, she picked up a single strand and slowly brought it to her mouth, chewing methodically. She then picked up a handkerchief from beside her and gently dabbed the corners of her mouth, wiping away nonexistent grease.

Throughout her movements, her back remained perfectly straight. Her neck was long and graceful and her black hair cascaded like a waterfall down her back.

She put her chopsticks down and looked at Jiang Xian who sat diagonally across from her. Her crimson lips curved into a precise smile. “Mom, isn’t sister coming back tomorrow? I’ll clear out my room for her tonight.”

“No need. Let her stay in the room next to yours. There’s still an empty one on the third floor,” Jiang Xian said, putting her chopsticks down as she clearly had no appetite.

“But that room has poor lighting,” Jiang Yingying said.

Jiang Yuan who had been silently shoveling food beside them slammed his chopsticks down onto the table. “Just listen to Mom! That room is still better than the wasteland, isn’t it?!”

The public inspection reports all said that desolate planet wasn’t suitable for human life. The gravity there was two to three times stronger than the capital star. If she could survive in such a harsh environment, would she really complain about a room not having windows?

Jiang Yingying timidly protested, “But Second Brother…”

“No more buts! If you don’t believe me, you can ask Big Brother and Dad when they get back. I bet they’ll say the same thing! This is so annoying. Why did the military even pass by that desolate planet…?”

Jiang Xian interrupted sternly, “Jiang Yuan! She’s your real sister! Don’t speak like that again!”

Jiang Yuan and Jiang Yingying were the same age. Jiang Xian had always wondered why their personalities were so different despite being twins. Now she understood. It was because the well-behaved one wasn’t actually her biological child. So she didn’t have high expectations for the Jiang Momo she had yet to meet.

“Fine!” Jiang Yuan leaned back against his chair in annoyance and just then, he heard the sound of a spaceship landing.

He assumed it was his father or older brother returning and stood up to open the door.

Then he saw a figure jump off the ship, carrying a pile of strange-looking metal objects.