chapter 56
We were approaching the location where we needed to drop out of FTL. The last 21 days had been quite boring. There was still a lot to do, but the ship flew so quietly it was a bit eerie.
When you weren’t in a current, it felt like flying through a vacuum where nothing disturbed you. The currents had some small bumps so flying through that made you feel that you were actually traveling.
Dropping out at the correct time and location was crucial here. In fact, just in case, we were going to be dropping out in a place that would add two days to our overall journey, but it was safer to do this than to try to aim for the sweet spot to drop out. Because if you missed that sweet spot. Well, this system's rulers were going to destroy your ship.
They seemed to take their security extremely seriously, with large warnings given to anyone wanting to come here. If you appeared anywhere but the designated areas, you were not going to survive for long.
Now, I believed what they so clearly promised to anyone breaking the rules, but I wondered what kind of weapons or ships they had available to make it happen.
“Lola, are you ready? And remember, we are to use fewer active sensors; we don’t want to paint ourselves as a target. FH, you observe what Lola does and learn from it.”
“Acknowledged,” they both responded back.
FH was coming along nicely. Her AI personality had developed enough that she needed a name. Because I was trying to tie her into the ship itself, she easily took the name Forward Horizon and identified herself as the ship. FH was just a nickname, and an easier way to distinguish between the ship itself and the AI that was becoming its mind.
It would soon be time to give her a proper core. There’s only so long an AI can function in a normal computer setup. She would be getting the better version of the same kind of core Sam and Dean have, although a bit bigger, as she needs more processing power. But overall, she will remain a lot simpler than Lola.
The reason is actually quite interesting as to why I need to do that. An interesting thing about how AI functions is that the more personality they have, the less capability they have to simultaneously process different tasks.
It’s like personality takes a lot of compute power away. But not really, as their upper capability is still the same. It’s just that they can’t split themselves as much.
The countdown was nearing zero, so I focused back on flying the ship. As soon as it hit zero, I had already pressed the button. The FTL bubble destabilized, and soon we reappeared in normal space.
Immediately, the screen in front of me started to populate with information. The location of the sun appeared first, then the planets, ships that were around us, and more and more objects that we could identify appeared.
A few seconds later, the entire solar system's planets populated the screen, even the planets we couldn’t see right now. We could guess their location thanks to the other planets we could see, as we knew the layout of this solar system.
Already, we were getting a communication message. That was handled by our communication computer, as this was all standard for now. There seemed to be plenty of traffic coming in and out, as we were picking up hundreds of ships accelerating and decelerating.
Soon, we were able to distinguish between the ships of the solar system and the ships that were here to trade or get repairs. Plenty of ships seemed to be barely functioning. They were heading toward a large trade hub. That, however, would not be our destination. Although we will need to get close enough for low-lag communications.
It didn’t take long for us to get a path that we needed to follow, which would lead us close to the station. Where we were heading, there seemed to be plenty of warships waiting. That was because of our request for further access into the solar system and the shipyard around one of the main planets.
It would take a little while before we started our deceleration burn, and with nothing better to do, I continued to observe what was in this solar system, as we kept receiving better and better data while continuing to observe everything we could.
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This system was crazy. Not only was there a fully circular shipyard around one of the planets that was in the habitable zone, yes, there were two of them that were inside it. There also seemed to be some terraformed moons around the two planets, and some that also seemed to be around gas giants.
The way we could tell was the color of the light reflected from them. Of course they could have some crazy colored rocky landscape, but that would be farfetched. Also, it seems that most other moons and planets had at least some sort of atmosphere.
The shipyard megastructure wasn’t actually the craziest megastructure. There was the trade hub itself, which was quite large, but that actually wasn’t bigger than the shipyard.
What was multiple times bigger was a megastructure named the Forge around the sun. It made a full circumference around it, although large sections seemed to be structural supports. But periodically, there were fully built-out sections, truly massive in size.
“Where did they get all the metal from?” I asked myself. But I seemed to have said it out loud, which prompted Lola to answer.
“They seem to have huge growing stations near the habitable planets and close to the gas giants,” she said, highlighting them on the screen. There were almost a hundred of them.
There were also constant ships coming from and to them. Most likely constantly bringing out the metal-like substances that the plants could be processed into, and of course bringing the necessary mass in, in the form of water and different types of gas needed to grow so much material.
There seemed to be huge gas collection setups built near the gas giants to harvest the necessary gases, and perhaps even produce the water needed from them. The whole setup was incredibly crazy, and I wondered what the history of this place was.
Then there was the military side of things. They seemed to have a similar laser-type defense system to the Haver solar system. They had a huge solar power collector at the North Pole of the sun, and from there, constant beams of energy were transferred all around the solar system with relays.
Another huge factor of their defenses was just the stupid amount of warships in this solar system. We had already identified 2357 and counting, all around the solar system, with multiple fortress-like stations close to important locations.
This place’s defenses made the Haver system look like a backwater. They really didn’t seem to be messing around. As we were slowly getting closer to the trade hub, we were able to start accessing its web and start getting some historical information about this place.
The people currently in charge acquired this solar system about 1,070 years ago. It says that they purchased the solar system from its original inhabitants, who had built the solar forge, but they had mismanaged it badly and were in quite a lot of debt.
On the web, it seemed to indicate that this takeover was a merciful action to save the inhabitants from a terrible fate, but I was smelling propaganda.
Right now, this solar system's name was Dralun but everyone seems to call it the Forge or the Forge of Dralun. Looks like the governing body in charge is called Clan Dralun. Well that made sense.
From the images we were getting from the station's web, they really did seem to resemble dwarves. They had their beards and otherwise looked kind of human, although short. The resemblance really was strange.
We had finished our day's long deceleration burn. Not long after the engines were cut off were we contacted by proper representatives. The voice that sounded from the speakers was gruff, but there was no weird accent so often depicted with dwarves.
“Greetings, Mage-Captain Remi Graves of the Forward Horizon. I am Relations Officer Halrus of clan Alget. From what I can see, you are requesting a shipyard berth that’s for small B-size hulls. If you want to make fixes to your current ship, then do not worry. Our shipyard berths are larger than station ones to make fixing and building ships of a specific size easier.”
For the first time in a long while, I would be able to speak in my native language instead of the standard I was learning. It could be dangerous to share that language key, as it would obviously identify me as a human from Earth.
It might give the corporations a way to track me, but I was going to need to explain a lot of technical things if I wanted to build my ship and get the materials I needed, and my standard wasn’t good enough for that.
“Greetings, Relations Officer Halrus of clan Alget. I have a plan of upgrading this ship heavily, perhaps even a proper term would be to build a new one, although I would be salvaging a lot from this one. This is why I was also requesting to rent a berth for a year and a half. That way, I would comfortably have enough time to finish building.”
“Only a year and a half? Well, you are certainly confident. Do not worry about the timeline too much, it’s easy enough to extend your stay.”
“I see you wish for quite a high power usage requirement, and you have ticked all the additional supports we can offer in terms of fabrication, but not for any building help. Once again, you can always change that later on. Now that I’ve clarified everything, I will calculate the cost of your stay.”
There was a moment of pause before I once again heard him speak.
“All of this will come to 35 million mana credits, and I’m afraid I’m going to need that paid up front.”
“That is not going to be a problem, but I do have a question for you. Is it possible to transfer Haver Prime credits to this system’s credits? That way, there wouldn’t be a need to transfer materials right away for my stay.”
“We do offer such services. I see you are registered with your adventurer card. It will take a bit of time to verify your identity. Please stay on the line.”
What followed was nearly 30 minutes of different types of verifications that I needed to do, including a live video call. When all was said and done, I had nearly 1.31 billion mana credits on my account that they made for me to use inside this system. The transfer took less than I expected.
The voice of the officer was now a lot more pleasant.
“I have deducted your renting fees, and there’s plenty left over. I will shortly be sending over the path you need to follow, and I do have to emphasize this: if you diverge from that path, you will be shot down. To ensure this system’s security, you will also be escorted by three security ships. Other than that, it was a pleasure, Mage Captain Remi Graves.”
“Likewise, Officer Halrus of clan Alget.”
The communication cut off, and soon afterward, we received the path we needed to follow. It was going to take another week before we made it to our destination, as we needed to follow speed laws.
Already, from the ships around here, three warships were starting to move to begin escorting me.
It was time to get back to my designs, as I only had a week left to refine them before I started to actually build everything out, which would probably require me to start changing a lot of things, but that was half the fun.