Amazon Apocalypse 8: Chapter 3 (Patreon)

We appeared aboard the Orraculum, a ship that I had recovered myself from a pile of so much dust and space debris that everyone else thought it was a naturally occurring asteroid.

Despite being old, the ship was far from archaic. In fact, the Orraculum contained magitech from the height of the Architect's golden age, back when they created the System. It was a feat of engineering that couldn't be replicated in the modern era. Seraphyne had been asleep in her ship's lifepod for a long time before I woke her up.

"I've already charted a course toward my system. Don't worry about your things. If you're missing anything, we'll simply have the ship fabricate it on the way," Seraphyne said. She finally released my hand once I fell into step behind her aboard the futuristic ship.

"How long will the trip be? And I assume you'll be in the crew quarters for the trip?" I asked.

Seraphyne shook her head, which sent her elegant hair cascading in a wave behind her back as she unclasped it and let it hang loosely over her shoulders.

"No, you'll be in the cabin boy's chambers. It's a small room off to the side of my personal chambers," Seraphyne explained.

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I don't rate the first mate's cabin?" I asked.

Seraphyne's cheeks flushed. "It's simply more efficient this way. There are plumbing issues in the rest of the ship. Only my bathroom is working, so we'll share it."

I took her explanation at face value, though I made a note to look at the Orraculum's plumbing later. I could have sworn the bathrooms were less tubes and pipes and more matter deconstruction chambers.

***

We were soon underway, and my planet was a distant speck on the horizon far behind me. Stars zipped by as we passed. This ship was a far faster and far smoother ride than the run-down old shuttle I'd taken an interplanetary trip in last time.

As I suspected, there were no plumbing issues anywhere in the ship, but my complaints died after I saw my quarters. The cabin boy's quarters seemed quite luxurious as far as shipboard bedrooms went. More importantly, it shared amenities with Seraphyne's own personal chambers, which were clearly the best on the ship.

Our first night aboard, the two of us enjoyed a holographic gaming chamber that seemed straight out of television.

"This holotheater is one of my favorite romance dramas. The heroine is from a noble family that's been destroyed, and she meets a dashing and handsome rogue who builds a bandit army with her and helps her destroy the ones who brought her house to ruin!"

Seraphyne beamed as she activated the holographic chamber, which soon filled our surroundings with constructs of light and force magic. For an ordinary mortal, the resulting effect would have been indistinguishable from reality, but my keen senses extended to even minute magical effects, which the enchantments couldn't replicate perfectly. And my extradimensional perception associated with my Kindling Architect job was even harder to fool.

Despite these limitations, the holotheater was a lot of fun. I would have enjoyed something a bit more action and adventure focused myself, or something a bit more like an action game, but Seraphyne seemed intent on the romance she'd chosen.

The two of us circled around the hero and heroine of the story the entire night like a pair of phantoms. We only interfered a few times with the plotline. The most important time was when the male lead seemed too dense to notice the heroine's obvious interest in him, so I stepped in and pointed out the obvious on his behalf. The second time was when the two of us joined the hero and heroine's party for the final battle.

Unfortunately, even restricting ourselves to F-Grade power, the two of us made short work of the enemy noble house and there was little else to do.

"That was marvelous," Seraphyne said as she looked at me with sparkling eyes. She pulled me in with a hand.

I grinned back at her. The moment hung between us. I stayed where I was. I wasn't dull enough to miss a hint, but I was bright enough to dodge something that wouldn't solve any problems for me and would cause a whole bunch of them.

"I enjoyed the movie, Seraphyne. I think I'm going to bed now though. I'm not sure what time it is, but I'm sure it's late." I shrugged and chuckled.

Seraphyne stepped back, shoulders slumping. "A-Grades hardly need sleep, Carter. But I understand you need some personal time. Take care."

The two of us parted ways for an indeterminate amount of time. I compiled a more thorough explanation of my current whereabouts and tossed it through the Sanctum's portal. I could have stepped through it in person and returned home, but if I did that there was no telling how long it would be before my women let me return to Seraphyne.

So I just threw a letter through and let the portal close before sitting down in my room on a dust-covered bed and letting the little maintenance drones scurry around the room. Apparently, whatever computer controlled these things hadn't thought that I would be using this room.

Neither would I, looking back a few years. But I had a lot on my plate right now. Or rather, I had a lot in my bed.

A bit of thinking on current projects made time go by quickly. I also spent some time analyzing the System integration prototype on my arm, which I was still wearing for lack of being properly integrated.

This thing interfaced with my body in a similar way to a headset. It was more augmented reality than a direct connection to the System like what I used to have. But it was also significantly more elegant than a crude plug directly into my soul like what the System shoved into me upon integration.

If this were an object or other device, I would have already started tinkering with it. But this was my soul we were talking about. I wanted to be damn sure that whatever alterations I made were well thought out ahead of time. And, since I had the soul of an A-Grade, any alterations would be extremely tough.

If I really needed to, I had a few ideas that might be worth trying, and if I were on my own I might have tried animal experimentation or even testing on a few prisoners to make sure my ideas were safe.

But all the research I could want had already been done. The makers of this very ship had been the ones to do it. All I needed was for Seraphyne to teach me.

And that brought me back to the other reason I was so eager to be on this ship with her, besides repaying the favor I owed her.

I stopped examining the gadget clamped to my wrist. My room was clean, and I shut my eyes for a few long breaths, which was all my A-Grade body needed to be mostly rested and recharged.

Then, I left to rejoin Seraphyne.

***

The rest of the trip proceeded with a more subdued atmosphere. Seraphyne pointed out a few interesting destinations but didn't try to reproduce the moment I'd squandered. Thankfully, when we reunited after that first night, she didn't seem upset with me. She kept the distance one would with a good friend, which perhaps I qualified as.

After all, I was the one who pulled her out of stasis. In all likelihood, I was one of the few living people she'd spent considerable time around. The other was Jade, who she clearly didn't get along with.

"We're nearly there," Seraphyne announced over a freshly replicated lunch.

"We're under some pretty intense gravity right now. I'd guess it's around ten thousand times my planet's," I said mildly.

"A little more than that. We were traveling through folded space at nearly lightspeed, and it still takes time to slow down," Seraphyne explained.

I nodded as I tried to drink from my teacup. It wasn't actually tea in the cup, since real tea wouldn't behave normally under such intense gravity. But this was apparently a common enough problem for people aboard this ship that the replicators compensated automatically to produce something that tasted a lot like Earl Grey.

By the time I finished my tea, we had arrived at our destination. The two of us disembarked directly, forgoing space suits and simply walking out as if through a door. The sight that greeted me was... less than entirely impressive.

The solar system might have once been impressive in Seraphyne's time, but it seemed anything but now. Large bits of metal and scrap orbited the sun and planets like so much junk. I couldn't tell if they had been independent satellites or parts of larger artificial constructs. Many of them looked nearly as bad as the Orraculum had when I found it.

Scanning the solar system, I could see only a single occupied planet. There might have been others on the other side of the sun or hidden in its glare, but for now all I could see was the one. The night half of it had just the faintest trace of artificial lighting instead of the bright luminescence I would expect from a sophisticated civilization.

It was clear that whatever grim fate had befallen the Architects had also come to the people who lived here. I was still waiting to see what was left of civilization with my own eyes, but I was already preparing for the worst.

"Home sweet home. Sorry about the mess." Seraphyne's words rang directly in my head, carrying with them a bit of the melancholy she must have been feeling after seeing her home in such a state. Traditional speech was impossible in space, but A-Grades had better tricks than flapping lips.

I responded similarly and carried words to her ears as vibrations through the Kindling Dimension.

"I suspect it looked better when you were here?" I asked.

"Much. There was a beautiful station there. It had a Teleportation Array so big I could bring the Orraculum right through it and go anywhere in the galaxy. Now it's nothing but ruins. There was a resort I liked over there, and a coffee shop I loved over there. The station I went to school on was over there." Seraphyne pointed several times.

"And what about down there?" I gestured to the only inhabited planet in the solar system.

"Oh, I think that's where most of the lower-grade workers kept their families. I've been there a few times, but it's a planet of no major renown. There was never anything of interest there compared to the stations." Seraphyne shrugged at the little ball of dirt in the distance.

To me, that world was anything but ordinary. Even from here, I could see the ruins of ancient architecture. There had been enormous structures on that planet once upon a time. And I could tell there were still people living there. Yet the world seemed to hold less interest for Seraphyne than the scattered ruins around us.

"It's not like there's nothing left," Seraphyne said as she caught my critical gaze. "My family had been given governance over a System node. It was on our primary station, and believe it or not, it's still in operation! That's our destination."

Seraphyne waved, and the Orraculum turned in space. She caught a handrail with one hand and my hand in the other, then remotely piloted the ship as we hung off its side. Despite my fears, she deftly navigated the dense debris field. The fact that we were outside the ship and could swat some stuff aside as needed also helped.

Even so, my trepidation only grew as we approached the small space station in the vast field of debris that was clearly our destination. Off to one side, a skull and crossbones in crimson was painted across a meteor.

On the opposite side were several space vessels of various makes that had been stripped for parts and left around like so much trash. I would have called it a junkyard if there wasn't an undeniable hostility to the place.

"We're here," Seraphyne said as we arrived at the edge of the space dock and the tip of the Orraculum pushed through the shimmering force field that kept the station full of air.

Though calling what was around us air was being very generous. It was more like a combination of soot, motor oil, alcohol, and fryer oil. The streets and paths were full of scattered trash that almost completely hid the ancient design all this was built off of. I could see where beautiful adamantium pillars had been patched over with simple wooden beams to reinforce places where some ancient impact had bent the magically toughened metal.

The place was packed with a dense crowd of shoddily dressed people who watched their surroundings warily. I could tell at a glance that the place was full of seedy lowlifes. This was the sort of place where people might pick your pocket or slit your throat at a moment's notice, though, being A-Grades, Seraphyne and I were safe from physical violence.

"You two look new to the Murkwater Pirate's Den. Need a guide?" asked a dirty and ragged street urchin.

Seraphyne waved the child off. "No, thank you. I'm actually from around here," she said.

The child on the street looked Seraphyne up and down skeptically before wandering off. Then Seraphyne started leading me wherever it was we were going.

"So this is where you grew up?" I asked as we walked.

"It was a lot cleaner back then. And people dressed a lot better. Come. The old nursery quarters have been turned into a bar and inn."

<Note>

Yes, we'll see that planet eventually. Seraphyne was a space girl though and didn't spend time on planets with the poors.

Also, poor Seraphyne, getting friendzoned by Carter (for now.)

Sorry for the slow upload rate guys. I'm juggling editing book 7 still along with some real life stuff that has things hectic for me. I just got the final proofed version of book 7 from my proofreader (Celda if any of you are looking for an editor who has worked on litrpg specifically for 10+ years.)