chapter 160
POV: Remi
Using my sleeve, I managed to get most of the sweat off my forehead. My throat was burning, but I couldn’t stop. For nearly 78 hours, I’d been laying mana pathways. One mistake and I would need to start from the beginning.
Pulling on everything I still had left, the work continued as more and more mana pathways started to connect with each other. While I wanted to look at the whole picture for a moment, I knew that if I did, there was no way I would find the exact spot where I left off.
More and more connections started to happen. Each one made a small wave go through the entire structure, and each time, I needed to make sure the current pathways I was making wouldn’t deviate.
Time continued to pass, my legs and hands started to shake. The connection waves were now basically constant. It was so damn hard to continue, but I pushed myself. If I stopped, there was no way to continue. No… did I mess it up?
Then I felt that thump underneath me. Pulling my focus back, my mana sense confirmed to me that I had succeeded.
“Captain, some water?” someone spoke to me, handing me a bottle of water which I gratefully drained. Slowly, everything started to make sense to me again.
“Thank you, Lola,” I managed to get out before I closed my eyes once again, laying on the latest device I made. It was about the size of a bed, so as good a place as any to rest.
Slowly, I came back to consciousness, realising sleep had claimed me. While I was still a bit tired, my mind was my own once again. Pushing some mana into the new device, I felt it respond. It was doing exactly what it needed to do.
Mana batteries came in all forms and sizes. But a battery system meant to power a spaceship was something a lot more complex. This one below me was fake, only meant to mimic what a spaceship’s mana storage would look like on magical scanners.
Having so many hard-light turrets without this kind of battery system would make it quite obvious that the ship itself was alive. That would be quite bad if anyone found that out. So a decoy was necessary; I just didn’t expect it would be so hard to mimic.
There were downsides to systems like this. The most obvious was that any ship with mana detection would be able to pinpoint our location. Of course, we would be able to do the same to them if they had a similar system. Ships in this strength range that could utilise mana or magical tech usually all need such a storage system for mana.
With it on and powered up, stealth was no longer an option. Fortunately for us, if we truly needed to, we could hide the signature, as we were just faking it.
It would, of course, make us a target as well, as systems like this weren’t cheap. In fact, a shitty version that was second-hand would still go for a minimum of 100 billion credits.
How a ship like ours managed not only to purchase something like this but also have enough credits would hopefully help us with the information war.
To anyone, it should look like we have powerful backers behind us, which would make them second-guess attacking us. That’s not to speak of the fact that we require such a system, which should already scare some people off.
100 billion for the real one, 100,000 for this fake one. That was the difference. This bed-sized box was filled with a purpose-made liquid that, over the month, cured and solidified. Now it is filled with mana circuits. I wondered what kind of price I would get if I were to sell this fake mana battery system.
If you were next to it, it would be easy enough to tell it was fake, but even a fake one would have its uses. Perhaps a billion or two. But it didn’t matter; I wouldn’t be making another one.
With that done, I went for a proper rest. After that were the daily training sessions, mainly for skills, and then it was back to making and installing turrets.
I was the only one who could build them, but a lot of the parts could be done without my help. So once again, I found myself surrounded by finished parts that I needed to start assembling.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Over the course of the months we have been here, I have refined absolutely everything to do with the turrets, from final assembly to the design of them. We even test-fired one of the large turrets.
We fired it at the ship's shields, which we layered on top of each other and surrounded the bolt to dissipate its power.
That was quite an eye-opening test, not just because of how powerful the shot was but because the shields could barely manage, even when layered so many times on top of each other. Next, we definitely needed to do something about our defences.
Thinking about that always brought me back to the black metal ingots we found on that wreck.
“FH, any information on the wreck and that metal?”
“Actually, yes. I managed to find out the name of the ship. None of its crew remain here, and only a few returned anyway. Their ship was destroyed in a space monster hunt. None of that gave me any clues, but I have been slowly tracing back the history of that crew and ship.”
“They tried to hide it pretty well, but every time they went into a certain area in the Zone of Misery, they were gone for a week or two. After that, they took it slow for almost a year, but somehow that slow year was always their best in terms of profit.”
“So, you think that they went to some place where they could salvage a bit of this metal, and then sell it off slowly to not raise suspicions?”
“That’s exactly what I believe. That area they go to is quite desolate, with a few really dangerous spots. Even a fallen tomb world. I am guessing that there is a wreck somewhere floating out there to harvest this metal.”
I took a moment to think things through, but something was nagging at me. A detail that didn’t seem quite right.
“Why would a ship carry ingots like that? They should have been in a different form to be quickly and efficiently used in repairing a spaceship. No, these ingots looked like part of a manufacturing process.”
FH was silent, and so was I, both of us trying to think things through. Then it hit me.
“FH, to make that metal and use it, you would need an entire civilization behind you. You would need specialised workers, entire production chains, thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, to farm portals for the materials needed. Tell me more about that tomb world.”
“I do not know if you are correct, Captain. The tomb world only became accessible after the civilization that developed there perished, as they never reached the FTL era. That place is dangerous. Multiple tries at colonisation failed quite disastrously.”
“You are thinking about this too much in the context of Earth. That civilization probably cleared portals and fought what was inside for hundreds of thousands of years. They eventually fell despite their best efforts. If they had metal like this available, I could see how they could put up a fight against such odds.”
“Understood, Captain. I will do some more research.”
I went back to working. We only had a few more turrets to finish up before we were done.
“Hold it steady,” I told everyone involved as we were pushing up one of the large turrets that went on the underside of the ship. As soon as we had proper connection and the nano machines confirmed a proper seal, the welding started.
This was the last one, and we were a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. You gotta love that efficiency. It only took about three hours to finish installing it, but another six to check that everything was correctly done.
“Captain, I have some information.”
“Go ahead,” I said to FH as I was still admiring the finished turret. It was currently doing diagnostics, retracting and deploying itself to see if there were any problems.
“About that tomb world we discussed. I managed to dig up quite a lot of information. You were correct, it did have a civilization on it that survived for a long while in those conditions. It reached early 20th-century tech, going by Earth's technological advancement. Basically, nothing remains of it, but perhaps some facility where they could harvest some of those ingots?”
“It’s a good lead. But what about the danger level?”
“Definitely above our current strength, even with our upgraded offensive capability.”
“Understood. Let’s put it in the future To-Do List. When we are strong enough, we’ll check it out.”
“Yes, captain. Also, there is another matter. This time it’s about humans and the thing I told you about.”
That made me sigh out loud. My own species and I had a complicated relationship. I’ve suffered so much in the hands of some of them, but so many have also helped me. No matter what, I wouldn’t want them to be gone from this galaxy. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“While there is still nothing concrete, I have been keeping an eye on the most likely suspects, and quite close to each other, they have started to hire humans on quite dangerous missions, and if they can, even attacking other humans with hired humans.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound good.”
“Do you want to abandon the current plan to hunt space monsters and head back towards Earth?”
Her words confused me quite thoroughly.
“Of course not. Our current selves could barely do anything, and without the help of others, we would just get ourselves killed.”
“But we can help with the information war. The most dangerous enemy is always the one you don’t see coming. Do it slowly, but start leading other humans to the same realisation you have had.”
“Yes, captain,” she said, and I could feel her excitement.
“Everyone, start packing up. We’ll do a testing run, and then we’re off to find some space portals or space monsters so we can get FH’s rank up and make more credits than we know what to do with,” I announced to everyone.
“Captain, I have basically planned out at least a trillion credits' worth of spending we can do to improve our situation. I don’t think the space monsters around here would give us that much.”
Of course Bob needed to ruin the moment. He had shown me that dammed list more than once. “It was a figure of speech. Now start working on dismantling that factory.”
It took time to properly clean everything up and make a lot of the stuff back into materials. Without deep storage, we wouldn’t be able to bring 10% of everything outside the ship on board.
We also had to suffer an inspection before we left, and oh boy did they want to find something wrong. They now knew how rich we were, even if we actually weren’t, because of the mana battery system broadcasting our wealth. In the end, they didn’t find anything.
“It is great to move again,” FH said to me as we were moving away from the space station.
She was right about that, but my current focus was on the screens where so many different diagnostics were running. It would take days before everything was tested, and then it was time to actually live test the new turrets.
We had been travelling for about 20 hours when the entire command bridge went red. The screens around me changed in an instant, highlighting three ships that were still quite far away, but were definitely on an intercept course.
“Captain, these ships have been ignoring any course-correction hails. A background check revealed that the ships might be part of a pirate lord’s fleet.”
“Let me guess, the pirate lord in question is Verrona’s father? FH didn’t answer with words, but I could sense the affirmative.
“Notify the system’s authorities. Let’s see if they listen to them.”
“Everyone, battle stations!”