chapter 83
POV Lord Gundur VIII of the clan Gundur
“Sir, I think you should look at this,” one of my aides said. He seemed to have rushed here. It’s bizarre to see him so frazzled.
“Go ahead, this seems important.”
“Thank you, and sorry for this. I’m just—yes, I will begin. Captain Remi Graves just entered FTL about an hour ago.” That made me relax just a bit, although if he did something underhanded, I would be quite disappointed.
“He sent some final goodbyes before they entered FTL, but also to you, Sir, a larger file containing some unbelievable data. I spent the last hour trying to confirm it to the best of my abilities, but what he said seemed to be true. I’m sending you the message he attached to it now.”
“Well, colour me interested,” I answered back as I looked at my tablet that had just received the message Remi had sent.
“It seems that the shared knowledge we have between our two species and the elves might be more than just a freak coincidence. When I visited your planet, I came across a goat, which came as a huge surprise, because we on Earth also had such an animal. But one can be a coincidence. Then there was a sheep, another domesticated animal we seem to share, but once again, perhaps a coincidence.
“I would never call two coincidences something firm. But then I met another one of these species, chickens. That made three, and that was definitely a pattern. Luckily, I have a lot of biological data from Earth and could confirm that yes, all of these animals I saw here that you brought from your homeworld seemed to have a common ancestor to the species we had on Earth.
“To conclude, it seems our species seems to also have a physical connection. I have no idea how that is possible, and currently I have no resources to pursue this further, but I believe it would be a shame if this discovery wouldn’t be further pursued. With this message, I also provided all the data I have gathered. Best of luck to you in all your endeavours, Lord Gundur the VIII.”
“What is the meaning of this? And the data he provided. You said you checked it?”
“Yes, but we do not have such a reference point as he did.” My aid answered.
“Long ago, there were tests conducted that confirmed that elves and dwarves could have children together. It was deemed a coincidence, as there are more cases of species who are from different sides of the galaxy being able to procreate. But have we confirmed?” I asked my voice sounding a bit raspier than I liked.
“Yes. We have been able to get enough samples from Remi. I pushed the analysts to finish as fast as possible. It is now confirmed that not only could we procreate with humans, but humans could with elves as well.”
“Like he said, two could still be a coincidence, but three and now this… Has there been any research conducted into elvish domesticated animals? Are there more physical connections there as well?”
“Sir, I tried my best but there is nothing official. I did manage to find some references to elvish cooking, where they seem to use a bird that seems incredibly similar to chicken. So there is a possibility, but further investigation is required.”
We somehow knew of each other from stories that should have been more myth than anything else. Many believed this is just a coincidence because we have such a similar biology, and with magic, who knows what’s possible. But this, I can’t understand.
I stood up and walked towards the painting of an old dwarven myth. Many believe that this painting is of the 1st Mountain Hall, but no, this is something much older, something that’s just an old tale.
A story of a once great dwarven civilization, who were masters of magic and technology, yet one day their greed caused a terrible disaster, with the entire mountain chain they made their home swallowed by earth and lava.
Before our homeworld was destroyed, some reports seemed to indicate that a place like this had been found. Not the city but where a huge mountain chain disappeared because of a huge earthquake. Like they say, in every myth there’s a bit of truth as well.
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What secrets did our ancestors truly hold?
“This is bigger than just our clan. Just as Remy knew that this was important and needed to be known by more than just him. I will give you as many resources as needed. You will compile all that we know. This will then be sent to all the dwarves, the elves, and some of the human contacts we must have made by now.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I just hope that this revelation would be big enough to stop the approaching civil war.
POV Lola
We were sitting around the table in the hydroponics, where the Captain eats. He had found a whiteboard from somewhere and was writing on it. Remi used to scramble my mind every time I looked at him, but slowly the old programming that he needed to use to make me was disappearing.
No longer did I have the urge to call him master. I am so glad that he never tried to do anything to that side of my programming wanted him to do.
Everyone else was also gathered here, looking at our captain, waiting to see what the plan was. He needed to keep things hidden because we were under surveillance.
At first, I was incredibly mad and I wanted to lash out, but Captain seemed to find it amusing and actually something he approved of. Long ago, I came to the conclusion that most humans, especially Remi, just didn’t make any logical sense.
He finished writing on the whiteboard in big blocky letters: The Plan. Was that really necessary? But he seemed so excited I couldn’t say it out loud.
“So the plan, let’s start with our destination. We all know where we are heading, but it’s good to make everything clear.”
“We are going to a place called the Barren Haven. A weird combination of words, but somehow it makes complete sense.”
“It’s a larger moon than we had back on Earth, which we have come to see are quite rare. It’s also way too close to the planet that’s also bigger than Earth. The moon itself, as the name says, is barren, with basically no atmosphere but gravity that’s actually pretty decent.”
“Now, because of its closeness to its planet—which is also a tomb world that has yet to fall entirely—it gets a lot of portals. Now we come to the second part of the name, Haven.”
“Well, almost all of the portals that appear there are the same as the ones that appear on the planet below, meaning whenever there is a break, anything that emerges dies from the lack of atmosphere.”
“A lot of new adventurers go there because of that reason, as there’s a lot of salvage. In fact, it’s one of the more beginner-friendly areas inside the Zone of Misery. What makes this special is because of the tomb world. There is a place for adventurers that are a bit more advanced, which means that this location is teeming with opportunities and a lot of other adventurers.”
“The main city on the Barren Haven is called Paradise. This city from what FH has found, has a population of around 30 to 40 million, and the reason for its name is because it’s the main staging ground to supply the still surviving bastions of civilization down on the planet.”
“Because of all of these reasons, this is our first destination. We will most likely stay here for a while, as this location seems to be able to provide us all that we need for the next stage.”
He stopped, remembering he had a whiteboard, and quickly started to write down our destination and a few bullet points as to why this is such a desirable location for us.
“First, there’s basically no oversight of the portals. Sam and Dean, I believe that you already suspect that my looting ability isn’t as simple as it seemed?”
“To sum it up, we will have a further discussion about this later. My ability doesn’t just turn everything into loot. I have a brief moment where I can choose what is turned and what is not, and with a little bit of experimentation I found that I can guarantee lucky drops.”
It was hard to process what he said. Sam rose up in disbelief.
“This is incredible. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Wait, no, no one can know, you need to,” but Captain calmed him down.
“Yes, yes, I understand. Believe me, we are going to have a long discussion about this, and secrecy must be kept at all times.”
“Yes, of course,” Sam answered and finally sat back down.
“Now, where was I… yes, unrestricted portals. Those will be an incredible source of wealth for us, but mainly to upgrade us, as we need to be really careful about what we sell. This should also allow us to get some high-end skills, and as FH once again has dug up, there are some permanent portals where there is a really low chance of getting an inventory skill, which is one of our goals.”
That made sense. Inventory skills were one of the more versatile and useful skills around, and while some affinities couldn’t use them, I believed captain could.
“When we have settled enough and have gotten plenty of upgrades for ourselves so that the planet below would be less deadly to us, we can start supply runs. Each one is incredibly dangerous because of the number of flyers on the planet, but our ship should be capable of surviving that. This should bring us an incredibly profitable revenue that we do not need to hide.”
“Captain, you seem to be quite confident about this, but after a quick simulation I ran, I do not think as we are right now the ship can survive, so we need to upgrade it as well,” FH interrupted with a truly valid concern.
“You are half right. This is the reason why we are going the scenic route to our destination. Thanks to my rank up to F-rank, I know I have a lot more capacity for bonds. There were many reasons why I didn’t make more AIs to help with the ship’s build, but the biggest one is that this ship is going to need a lot more AIs to run it than just you.”
“What do you mean?” FH said, and I could sense some worry in her voice.
“The plan is to make similar clusters of AIs I have done with some of the droids, to have only one bond to them. Now, this wouldn't work here, but the principle is the same."
“You will be the main AI as always as you are the ship, but as you said, doing everything is overwhelming. So the plan is for a lot of the more difficult tasks, like dealing with the shield configurations. Those tasks would be done by supporting AIs raised to do this one task as well as possible.” He finished looking at us like we all understood what he meant perfectly.
“So FH would be a more general, more human mind, capable of better adapting to unknown situations, while the more specialised AIs under her would be true savants at their tasks.” I added for clarification, as the captain can always be a bit too wordy and complex in his explanations.
“That sounds like a scary ship to fight against,” Dean added.
“Yes, I like that, but we would probably need a lot of AIs. Can you truly stretch so far, Captain?” FH asked.
“Yes, I am confident in it. It will take a while to raise such AIs, and they would need more practical training as well, so we will need to drop out of FTL every once in a while and run some simulations while actually using our guns and shields. We also have some other things we need to build, and of course finish assembling our workshops.”
The captain finished adding those points to the whiteboard and then he pushed it a bit further away.
“Now, let's start with the next portion: what types of systems would need AIs, and at what level?”
I tried to push my processors to run faster. Then remembered I no longer worked like that. Anyways I was certain that I could help with this part.