chapter 148
POV: Remi
As soon as my feet hit the ramp, my whole body relaxed. The entire ship greeted me back.
“I’ve missed you,” I said out loud, and then looked towards my crew members. “I’ve missed you all as well. So, what have we learned from all of this?”
Everyone except Bob looked a bit confused. He was also the one who spoke up.
“That whenever you have such a stupid idea, we are to knock you unconscious and bring you back on board?”
“Exactly right.”
“Was it truly that bad?” Dean asked, but before I could answer, I felt the ship push off, and then its manoeuvring thrusters pushed themselves to the absolute limit to keep it airborne long enough for the main engines to get us moving fast enough so the atmosphere could start helping us stay airborne.
I took my helmet off, as there was no longer any need to hide myself. At the same time, I triggered all the bots that were fighting the ground forces to self-destruct. “It wasn’t bad or good, but it was sure enlightening.”
As I looked back, I saw Verrona fighting the pirates that were still trying to capture her. It seemed they still had hope of getting off this rock.
“I assume we can disable those ships?”
“Yes, Captain,” FH said, and I mentally gave my acceptance.
The engines of the still-functioning pirate ships exploded, and so did most of their turrets. That made the fighting below stop for a moment.
My eyes met Verrona’s, and I spoke out loud, knowing she would be able to read my lips.
“I hope you’re able to kill your father like you wish.”
Her eyes widened as she finally understood fully what was happening. I watched her look toward the pirates and notice their insignias. She started laughing madly.
Then I felt eyes on me and looked toward the fortress. In the central pillars, on one of the balconies, the Duke was looking towards me. That one was truly powerful, and he could end us personally even now.
I gave him a nod, as I had accomplished his mission. He would have his war while I got plenty in return.
The ramp started to close as we were gaining altitude quickly. The Duke gave me a nod back, and I knew that we would have a safe flight out of here. I also managed to get a last glimpse of Verona as she and the surrounding forces were finishing off the last of the pirates.
“When will you meet her next?” Lola asked as the ramp finished closing up and we accelerated even further.
“No set date or anything like that. If we meet, we meet; if we don’t, we don’t. And I personally hope that the meeting will be far in the future. Especially if she doesn’t get to kill her father, because then she would still be quite cross at me.”
“Captain, we will probably have a lot to discuss, but before that, the fights in the arena between the Duke’s gladiators… are they scripted?” Sam asked, looking incredibly curious, while Dean looked tired of Sam’s curiosity on this subject.
This made me rub my chest where that bullet had hit me. She had used so many boosting skills that it truly was a close one.
“The answer is no, but there is a trick to it all. We constantly fought each other for training. That’s why we could anticipate each other's moves, making the fights so interesting to watch. But inside the arena, everyone went for the kill.”
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“Then how did you manage to survive that last fight? It seemed that only luck was keeping you alive, as those bullets came so close to killing you each time?” Bob asked.
In response, I made a tiny telekinesis push at just the right moment without ever having to move my hands, making Bob stumble.
“What in the hell?” he said as he almost fell to the ground.
“Mastering skills is more important than ranking up. The knowledge I have gained from this excursion is beyond my expectations. We will all be changing our training plans for the future. Speaking of our future… FH, get us the hell out of this system and into an empty location where we can get all of these ugly plates off of you.”
What I felt back was appreciation from a lot of the ship AIs, as most of them weren’t able to function because of the plates that changed the profile of the ship. It was important that our ship wouldn't be identified, but most AIs seemed quite dissatisfied with their current situation.
“And after that?” Lola asked.
“Bob, do we have the materials I asked for?”
“Of course, captain. Who do you think I am?”
“Then our next destination, after getting Forward Horizon fully operational again, is to find a hidden location where we can in peace upgrade Forward Horizon’s offensive capabilities.”
“So you figured out how to make hard-light turrets?” Dean asked.
“That I did, that I did—along with a lot of other upgrades.” I looked toward Lola, contemplating if I should reveal this now or later.
“Lola, I will need some help to figure out an interesting idea based on some elven technology.” With my words, I sent her a data package, and the more she went through it, the wider her eyes got.
“Captain… could this really work?” she asked while still being completely absorbed in the data I sent. The others looked at us confused, so I explained.
“The elves mastered biological seed engineering long ago. In fact, they were such masters at it that currently they only retain a fraction of what they used to know. They were able to design trees to have fully built-out buildings inside of them, without ever having to forcefully change anything.”
“Are we going to make a tree ship?” Bob asked, amused, which earned him a playful slap to his shoulder from Lola.
“No, he does not want to make tree houses. He wants to use a similar concept to increase our industrial capability,” her words made Bob focus up, unlike I’ve ever seen before.
“Explain,” he said, barely containing his desire to understand.
“A good example would be CPUs,” I started to explain. “With the printers, we can only make them up to a certain complexity. Anything beyond that and they simply won't function. To make anything better, you would need complex machines the size of entire apartments.”
Lola then took over. “This technique could make CPUs and anything else using the same method as the elves did while changing the tree seeds. It, of course, wouldn’t work exactly like that.”
“We would most likely need to submerge the tech seed inside a solution with the required materials, but this would allow us to make truly high-end components with minimal cost and time investment after finishing the first tech seed that works.”
“Now that sounds like something that is going to make us a lot of credits,” Bob said after he started to understand what all of this really meant.
“This will be a long-term project and will probably take us quite a while to figure out, but the advantage of this type of manufacturing is that we can use portal materials. This is what we were missing to continue upgrading our industrial capabilities to keep up with portal materials.”
Bob came and clasped both of my shoulders. “Captain, this almost makes me want to toss you back onto that moon so you could bring us even more miracles. But I think my earlier statement still remains, don’t ever do something like that again, please.”
“I leave it to you then,” I answered back, which made him smile. “But I do want one of those cigarettes, and I really missed the food on the ship.”
Soon, we were around our customer meeting table that doubled as a place to eat.
“So, captain, what was it like there?”
“Dangerous and mostly filled with constant training. Managed to quite quickly sell off a lot of the entertainment data I have to a representative in the same organisation as Vir Kir Dern, a Baron of Entertainment. That got me the necessary resources and information to pull off everything I needed to get done, and more.”
“Did you get some type of skill that makes your armour stronger?” Sam inquired, quite interested in the answer.
“No, that’s just an advanced application of my Hardened Connection skill. I have no new skills, at least not absorbed. I did manage to steal a couple of important skills to finish off the set that started this all.”
I started to explain to everyone that the Elven Dominion has knight orders. While there is variation, all of them have six basic skills. The best orders have skills that require multiple affinities to work, like the original four I got.
“So wait, you managed to get the two missing ones?” Sam said, barely holding himself back from jumping over the table and pulling the answers from my head.
Two skills appeared in my hand. I quickly made them disappear once again. Better not keep those out for long, just in case.
“Got a few more. Needed to steal these, and believe me, the witch hunt afterwards was crazy. It was nice that no one knew I had any inventory skill. Also, there are people who can inspect even inventories, although they do need to be familiar with what affinity you have, otherwise they can’t inspect it.”
“Anything else?” Dean asked.
In response, I pulled out a disassembled plasma–light magic-tech sword. “This is the technology that made me decide to do all of that.”
They all marvelled at it, and it was truly glorious. The only things that could rival this sword in power were artefact-grade weapons. Even then, most would not be able to withstand the strength of this blade for long.
Like with every light, plasma, and similar type of weapon, they only had their hilts and needed to be activated for the blade to come out. Depending on the configuration, you could have any type of melee weapon, from knives to war hammers pop out of the handle, ready to kill anything you desired.
“This also helped me figure out what I was missing to truly refine my hard-light weapons. The resource requirements for these plasma–light weapons are ridiculous. Also, you need specific affinities to even wield them properly.”
That statement disappointed a few people around the table. Also, the feelings I got back through our bonds were so nice. Being away from all of them made me feel quite empty. But I could also see how all of them had grown over the time we were apart, which made me quite happy.
“We will have a lot to do and a lot of research, and upgrading to accomplish. We’ll also start training as soon as possible. Let’s get your skills ranked up, shall we?” There was a chorus of agreements all around. Damn, it was truly good to be back.