chapter 122
POV: Lola
Looking over my workshop, I made sure that everything was stored away so that nothing could shift during flight. This also meant that I could finally just sit down and process everything that had happened.
It's been over a year since I last had a body that could feel so much. It was exactly what I needed. Once again, I felt properly alive. Something that some of my programming from long ago wanted me to believe all along, when I wasn’t.
Captain did a lot to mitigate those problems, as it was not appropriate for AIs without human-like bodies like my current one to have such fake feelings, as it usually just led to AI psychosis.
Just being able to feel my own hands felt so much better than anything before. Yet this wasn’t all that this new body brought me; now I had affinities and could get skills. All of that seemed a bit unreal and something that even now seems to be happening to someone else rather than me.
That being said, my innate ability seems to be something that will help me so much in the future. Opening one of the test samples, I simply focused on it and then touched it. My mind was flooded with information that usually would have taken me a day to gather and multiple weeks to figure out.
Understanding Touch did exactly what it said it would do. It would allow me to better understand materials simply by touching and focusing on them. It made little sense to my mind how that was possible, but it worked, which was the important part.
Now I disliked the A-rank space portal even more. Of course, it showing up got me to this body a few months earlier, but it also meant that we will no longer be clearing things like we have been, so no new samples.
We would have most likely still started taking resupply missions to the planet, but then we would have stayed on that planet down below and ran portals there, which usually had a higher rank than up here on the moon.
The worst thing, however, was that Captain still hasn’t gotten the Inventory skill we specifically came to this place to hopefully get. Buying one would probably not be possible, as so many others also wanted one, and there were people out there way richer than we were.
But that was enough sitting around doing nothing; it was time to help the others prepare for takeoff.
It was always fun watching Bob as he constantly yelled, because apparently almost every drone still did things wrong. Which I didn’t even understand how that was possible. Their programming should be better able to retain information so they wouldn't make the same mistakes.
I often also just stared at Bob, trying to think of the best ways to test his new capabilities. Probably will have to ask Captain for a couple of new testing devices, especially ones that would accurately let me measure piercing.
Then again, it was problematic fixing under armour as it wasn’t easy to get to. I just realised that I should be able to heal almost anything now with the right skills. When Bob looked at me, he seemed to flinch for some reason. I wonder why.
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Too bad that my workshop was so small; I would really like a special area not just for testing but so that I could help my fellow crew members train their skills.
Perhaps changing up some of the training ground. The shooting range would be big enough, and perhaps just one target for them to shoot at would be good enough. The rest could be converted into something more useful and more fun.
There was a lot of dismantling to be done, which was kinda sad to see. But we really didn’t have much space on the ship, especially because we needed to leave basically all of the cargo hold empty so that we could take on the resupply missions, as basically all of them needed quite a lot of cargo space.
The Captain and Bob often discussed what types of missions they should take, which would allow us the freedom to hide the fact that we were going to be changing the entire ship into something that was probably extremely rare, not just in this galaxy, but the whole universe.
FH has been able to find some references to living ships. Usually, they seemed to be flown by strong adventurers, but those ships were also completely alive. Basically, purposely grown creatures in the shapes of ships.
They seemed to be a lot weaker at the start than any other normal ship, but when their ranks got higher that kept narrowing the gap until, at the high end, they started surpassing regularly built ships.
When the last of the finished neural net was brought on board. FH contacted me.
“Lola, are you sure there isn’t anything else that could be changed to bio-cybernetics on board?”
We had long conversations with FH and the Captain about that, but nothing seems to be strictly better or even close. One thing that did come somewhat close was air purification, but it would have brought other problems that the Captain didn’t want to deal with.
“I understand your worries, but the Captain seems confident that this is the best course of action. As always, I have put my trust in him, and I think you should not worry. I have a feeling he knows what he’s doing.”
“I have no doubt that I will be able to go through the same awakening as all of you, but will the results be good enough if I’m still mostly made of non-living materials?”
“Now that I’m not sure about, but none of us are entirely made of bio-cybernetics either. We have some regular cybernetics as well, as sometimes those are better at certain tasks, and for a ship that’s not just some things. For you, most of the things are better if they are made out of regular materials.”
There was a longer pause before she answered.
“You are right. The plans the Captain makes usually turn out the way we need them to, so hopefully this will too.”
And just like that, I felt the connection fade between us. FH getting back to doing the things she needs to do, like I should be.
Time went by fast. FH managed to get us clearance to take on resupply missions and leave our current base behind. Even the ones who owned it came by to check out if we needed to revert the base back to how it was. They seemed incredibly happy with everything we changed, so we were good on that front.
We were all on the command bridge as this base’s hangar doors opened up for the last time. The ship's engines rumbled in that nice way as we took off. We headed towards the city centre.
“Bob and I finally managed to figure out how we were going to be doing things. His incredible packing capabilities allow us to take two smaller resupply missions to pretty close by outposts. What this allows us to do is to deliver the first batch of supplies, then fly over to the next location.”
“Because we have resupplied, we have permission to run portals and stay however long we want on that planet. We will simply claim that we found a good cluster of portals and then head back towards a hopefully securable location we found.”
The captain looked around to see if we were all following. I wasn’t entirely sure about Sam, but the others seemed to get what the plan was. Once again, I looked towards Sam, thinking of ways I could test that innate ability of his. For some reason, he quickly turned his head from me.
“Lola, stop that.” What was I supposed to stop? But Captain just continued.
“The problem with this is that a mana rebirth of this size will alert the local wildlife. That's why we need to be able to find the securable location, because we're going to have to fight. Also, we will be using plenty of mana tech to hide what we’re doing, like we did with all of your rebirths.”
We all nodded along. The trip to our destination wasn’t long, and for the first time I was able to witness cargo loading without Bob yelling because the people who were doing the loading were as good or perhaps even better than Bob, but I was never going to voice that out loud.
In just two hours, our entire cargo hold was filled. Apparently, the places we were going were more of research outposts than farming outposts, so we also wouldn't be picking up cargo. We would still probably fly to some other place to pick up some cargo on our trip back to the moon, so even that would be profitable.
I was kind of getting nervous as we left the bubble of the city. The planet wasn't too far away, but it would still take a couple of hours, as we didn’t want to pick up too much speed.
There was a reason why these resupply missions paid so well, and that was because there were a lot of dangerous fliers, many of whom know that large metallic fliers like our ship usually had good food inside.