chapter 76
Everything took so much time. When I was building the Mark I, most of the time went into designing the ship and everything inside of it, and then finding the correct resources. This time, while all of that still took some time, most went into testing everything and making sure that absolutely anything we added to the ship was in top condition and ready for battle at a moment’s notice.
If I had known back then what was out here in the galaxy, I most likely would have never made it off Earth before it swallowed me. There would have been so much more to do to make the Mark I survivable.
On the Mark II, every station needed to be tested, and many required redesigns as we simulated emergency situations, finding the current layout less than optimal, sometimes downright dangerous.
There needed to be clear pathways to move, but also airlocks that would limit the freedom to move about. This would ensure that the entire ship wouldn’t be open to vacuum if a hull breach happened.
Mark I was truly dangerous in the fact that I didn’t have a good way of emptying the atmosphere inside so that rapid decompression wouldn’t happen if the hull was breached. Now I had easy access to designs for such systems, among others that were incredibly useful to have, and all of them needed to be fitted into the Mark II.
The engineering challenge of it was exciting, and I loved how my sixth sense hinted at things that needed to be improved, and of course, truly dangerous mistakes that could have cost us our lives.
That was one unfortunate fact about building my ship here, I couldn’t fully finish it the way I liked. Some things needed to be kept hidden, but I could make preparations in a way that wouldn’t give anything away.
Walking the halls of the ship was an amazing feeling, and what was even better was how, ever so slowly, the echoing footsteps I caused at the beginning were now muffled as more and more things were added to each floor.
Amongst all the floors, the fourth one—the very top of the ship—was going to be the most varied. While there was drone storage all around the ship, here we were going to be keeping the more specialised units that were not focused on ship or space jobs. That’s why there was also an extensive training area and a recreational area.
Some of it was just tables where you could sit around and play games or just hang out, but there was also a spa area. My crew members were quite sceptical about that, but as we were putting the finishing touches on it, it did remind me of Earth, which I liked.
While there were some more luxurious crew quarters on the fourth floor, most of the important quarters were in an armoured box that extended from the ceiling of the second floor to the floor of the fourth. Inside this extra layer of protection was the brain of the ship, the bridge, and some places to sleep where you could feel even safer.
At the back of the fourth floor was an empty workshop area. This was designated for Lola, as she wanted bio-printers and other devices that would allow her to continue refining the bio-cybernetic technology she helped create.
At the very front of the fourth floor were some parts of the hydroponics, but mainly the hydroponics were at the front of the third floor. The rest of the third floor—except for the command box, as we started to call the armoured inner area where the ship was actually controlled from—was entirely for my own workshop.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Of course, right now it was quite sparse, and in the near future it would also stay like that. Right now, in the logs of the ship, this area was listed as the cargo area for ship supplies. I didn’t really want to advertise the fact that I would have a high-grade workshop on my ship.
The second floor was currently under heavy construction. This was where the heart of the ship was. Altogether, we have been here for almost eight months now, and we have about two-thirds of the nano machines needed for the power core. We still needed more for all the other functions of the ship as well.
The railgun is being installed right now. We needed to splurge a bit more on some better materials—not in function, but in mass—otherwise the balance of the ship would lean too far forward. At the same time, the four main engines were being finished at the back.
Right now, they were in a testing phase before we finished them up fully. Behind the power core, towards the engines, was a huge U-shaped control panel.
If the server room was the brain of the ship, and the power core its heart, then this control panel was like the spine, helping deliver the commands of the brain and directing where power needed to go.
The entire thing would need three normal humans to run it properly. The bridge would need at least four, with many other systems also needing proper operators. In fact, FH and Lola calculated that for the ship to run optimally, it would need twenty-one crew members.
Of course, we could run the ship now as it was, even if it would be less optimal. Right now, we were going to keep our operational structure as it was, to show others who might be spying that we were okay with a little bit less optimization. But with the programs we had written, we could still completely and functionally operate the ship.
It was a bit annoying having to finish up things after we had already left the shipyard, but even though none of us had discussed the way we are doing things, I believed all of us agreed it was better to keep some secrets. And of course, I wouldn’t be happy with just optimally running this ship. No, I wanted something better.
The annoying thing about building this ship was how many different ways we needed to design the outer armor to retract in some places. So many things needed to be hidden for their own protection and for the surprise factor.
Every gun we had, from the smaller point-defense turrets to the medium defensive turrets to the two big assault turrets, and of course the opening for the railgun needed to be able to hide under the armor.
And that was only the offensive turrets. There were also the cameras, the sensor placements, and the areas where the RCS thrusters could expel their propellant.
The legs of the ship needed their own way of hiding themselves, which was another headache to solve. We also came to the conclusion that the RCS thrusters simply were too weak and consumed too many resources to help maneuver the ship in atmosphere.
That’s why I needed to start offloading some of our more expensive materials to get more credits so we could build adjustment thrusters that used the same materials as the side engine propellers. The new propellers themselves had a diameter about the size of a tree that you could barely wrap your fingers around.
This time, using electric engines to power these propellers was the correct choice. They would also help deal with the times when the mass of the ship couldn’t be perfectly balanced, as they had quite a lot of power. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be fully hidden inside the ship, as their wake would destroy quite a lot of things it came into contact with.
That was a good discovery because that problem did have a kind of a solution with materials that were less credit depleting than the ones the propellers needed, but still somewhat interacted with the space fabric of the universe. We also needed them to cover the side engine and parts of the wings to keep them safe when those propellers were working.
The amount of ‘oh shit, if we did it like this, we would die’ moments happened more often than I liked, and I truly hoped that by the end of this build we would have discovered all of them.
As we were adding more and more stuff to the ship, I also started to feel, at the back of my mind, that we were slowly getting close to my limit. Thoron was right when he mentioned that I would need to get stronger to be able to protect the entire ship from the harmful effects of mana.
If I wanted to continue making this ship as good as it could be, I would need to advance once again. Of course, some skills could help, but that would probably be a bad use of a skill slot. We will have another trip to clear some portals soon, so hopefully that would help a bit.
This would be the fourth such trip, as now the G-rank portals gave very little in the form of rank advancement. The monsters inside were a joke to handle. I was even practicing my close combat with them, something Dean had started to help me learn.
Overall, I’m optimistic that we will get the ship finished in time, and that I’ll be capable of protecting it in a more mana-dense area than we are currently in.