Some of the fiction bits I noodled around with last year involved a station disaster, told from the viewpoint of a conscious ship. Since then, I (1) decided not to kill off Ship's crew (I made them interesting characters, whoops), (2) decided that Ship is not properly a Zhdez ship (though its drives are), (3) decided the Ring was jointly governed, and (4) I settled on a name, but it's private. But aside from all that, here is a conversation between Ship and two tween Inukari ship crew who took refuge on it when the station came apart.

"So you're a bot ship," Kim said, a little skeptically.

"Self-aware general intelligence, yes."

"And your crew is dead, and there is no one else in-system from your combine?" I could see where this was going, but I decided to let it play out.

"Correct."

"So we could claim salvage rights over you." There it is.

Under Ring law, self-aware bots are theoretically self-owning, though there's a little gray area about how much hardware is part of the "self" one owns. I'm pretty clearly integrated into the ship, but I'm also a Zhdez ship, and the Ring might insist on its own tests for self-awareness.

"I am legally a person," I pointed out.

Kim seemed a little taken aback. "Oh! I thought... I thought you were just an LLM."

Aluma was a little more skeptical. "A ship's LLM might also say that, though, to non-crew." That's... that's actually good thinking, kid.

"This is why Zhdezplier prohibits non-disclosed LLMs, though I suppose that's also what I'd say if I were a non-disclosing LLM." Which is why they're prohibited.

Kim was quickly defensive, "So does Inukar, but I know the Terran ships sometimes have them." Yeah, kid, but Terran ships are never self-aware because self-aware ships don't like being enslaved and Terrans have that habit.

I sighed, figuratively. "Look, you can't perform a sentience test, so can you just assume I'm a person and make a salvage claim later? Or... I mean, go ahead and try to assert captaincy, get it out of your system."

"Now you've made it weird! Fine: ZSS $SHIPNAME, you are a derelict vessel, I claim salvage rights, give me captain privileges."

"No. But you can sit in the big chair if you want."