Starmind Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Happy New Year! Last post of the year? Starmind!

I know, I can't believe it either! Someone (you know who you are, and thank you!) on the Discord lamented that this series never got more than three chapters, and it was always fun to write. No promises for the future, but I've at least finished up the chapter I was in the middle of.

For the 90% of you who joined since I last published a chapter, welcome! Starmind is a fun little Shipcore project that I played around with about a year ago, and always wanted to get back into. It's got a collection and everything, if you want to check out the first three chapters.

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that this came out exactly one year after chapter 3. I'd say it can only get better, but I don't want to jinx it.

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The things that Bekeri wanted me to make were basically short staves, each with two knobbly sections for handles and a latticework holder at one end that unscrewed into two parts to accept a mana crystal. "Reinforced Focuses" he called them, and no sooner had he assembled the first one than I got a notification:

Reinforced Focus added to available production patterns. Requires: Small Base Mana Crystal (1), Hull (0.01)

That was fun, and I instinctively knew what to do with it! With a thought I picked up the loose mana crystal off the table, putting it back in its Storage Matrix, and then I simply started making a whole Reinforced Focus at once, instead of in pieces. It just rose slowly, lying horizontal, out of the table. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t using a whole hundredth of a unit of Hull, because one unit made about ten square feet of Hull, four inches thick. That was way more volume than a hundred of the focuses. Maybe there was some kind of wastage? Or maybe the messages just couldn’t handle smaller numbers. Either way, this was much more convenient that making a bunch of pieces, and this way it had the crystal already in it!

“We’ll need four of them, if you can,” Bekeri said. “The Captain is the only one who isn’t a mage, so she can’t use one. Harvin may or may not be able to use one to its full potential, but better safe than sorry.”

I certainly had more than enough Hull, so I simply told Bekeri that it would take a little over three hours to make the crystals, which he accepted quite happily.

“Now, what about a larger version, for ship-to-ship combat? Could you–” he started, but I cut him off.

“You want me to make a weapon to attempt to damage or destroy the other ship?”

“Only if necessary. We wouldn’t–”

“That’s alright. I don’t need to know. I refuse. Sorry.”

I felt very strongly about that. No, that didn’t quite do my feelings justice. I felt an intense revulsion at the idea of anyone trying to damage anyone else’s ship in the void. Not only might it destroy the ship, but if there was a major leak the Crew inside might die! They needed air of the right composition, and at the right pressure and temperature, to live! I would not, in any way, be part of anything like that, and Bekeri was very understanding, dropping the subject immediately.

While Bekeri and I were busy making useless weapons, Varlanda was messing around in the crystal chamber. She’d steered well clear of the column that held my Core, which I appreciated, and had gone right back to the Transmutation Matrix, since she already had that housing open. Harvin was on the Bridge, staring off into the void and right at the oncoming ship, trying to learn something, anything about it. Simeon was still sleeping. That was good to see. He needed it very badly. I didn’t know what else he might be needed for on the ship, but it was nice of the Captain to let him sleep while everyone else was working. I adjusted the rejuvenation field a little, to help him recover better, and left him to his rest.

That left only the Captain. She was sitting in her space with a look of intense concentration on her face and a Slate on the desk in front of her. She had a stylus in her hand that she gnawed on the end of. Sometimes she scratched something with it, but mostly she gnawed on it.

“Temeri?” I said. I tried to be as gentle as I could since she looked so focused and worried, but she still jumped.

She collected herself almost immediately. “Yes, Star?”

“Is there anything I can do to help you? You look worried.”

She gnawed on the end of her stylus, then quickly took it out of her mouth and tapped it on the desk instead.

“I am,” she said after a few moments.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She took the stylus and began rolling it very quickly between her fingers, up and down her hand, looking straight ahead into the wall.

“This is— I mean, you are not a warship,” she said finally. “You are not made for combat.”

“I’m not!” I replied proudly.

“You’re a surveying vessel, refitted for an experimental long range Teleportation Matrix. Meaning no offence, you're not very fast, and you have no weapons and no armour.”

“That sounds like it might be right,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was, but I figured that she should know.

The stylus moved faster. “Now we have a ship incoming, of unknown size and capability. We know nothing about their crew or their intentions. We can’t fight, and it is unlikely that we can run.”

“Why would you need to? Isn’t it exciting that someone is coming to meet us?”

“‘Exciting’ is not the word I would use. The people who live all the way out here… most of them fall into two types, and neither is particularly welcome back home. There’re those who made a run for it because they’d be arrested or killed otherwise — murderers, pirates, people like that — and there're those who don’t want to be disturbed, mostly because they’d be arrested or killed if anyone found out what they’re doing. Necromancers, diabolists, flesh shapers… You see? We don’t know who’s on that ship, but it’s unlikely to be anyone we want to meet.”

“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure what most of those things were, but I trusted Temeri that they probably weren’t up to any good.

“Can you make any kind of weapons to defend ourselves with?” she asked hopefully. “Anti-ship, I mean.”

“No.” My answer was immediate. I felt the same… I wanted to call it nausea, that I’d felt when Bekeri had asked me. I didn’t have any bits to feel nausea with, but I felt like I knew how it should feel, and this was pretty much it. I couldn’t stomach the idea of carrying weapons. It was just not who or what I was. “I’m sorry. Bekeri asked me before. But no.”

“Okay,” Temeri said, slumping a little in her chair. The stylus stopped, and she slapped it down on the desk. Then she rose and strode over to her wardrobe.

“Star,” she said, “is it possible for you to not watch our cabins, at all? I’d like to get changed.”

Cabin. Oh, right! That was the word for their own spaces! But what she asked… could I do that? I tried, and— “Not really,” I admitted. “I always see everything, in a way. But I can promise not to look, if that helps? Not pay any attention unless you call for me?”

“That’s… that’ll do,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything, then.”

I immediately stopped paying attention. It was hard, since I liked to keep track of the Crew, but she’d asked so I did my best. But not paying attention to one particular thing is hard! I kept wanting to look at nothing else, so in order to keep my promise I had to keep all of my concentration anywhere but Temeri’s “cabin.” I looked at the stars — they were where they always were, and looked the way they always looked. I looked at the ship, far away, that was approaching us — it had come a bit closer, so I could see it a little better, but mostly it was round and boring. I looked at the big, yellow planet that Harvin had named Avara, and that was a little more interesting. The planet and its rings were spinning, so I was always seeing different things on it. Mostly different splotches of brown or white, but at least they kept changing.

In order to take up even more of my attention, I looked at the planet in all the different ways that I could. There was still a feeling of mana from near one of the moons, not just from the ship that was approaching us. But there was also something, I thought, in Avara’s rings, so that was interesting. It was small, and it went around and around quickly, but I was pretty sure that it was there. And when I looked at the planet with all the different kinds of light that I could see, I could tell that there was mostly water in the rings, but also a bunch of other stuff, like silica and metals and things like that, and that gave me an idea. I wanted to make a bunch of hull, but I didn’t have enough material. But-but, as far as I could tell, all the base elements that I needed could be found in those rings! Could I just go there and get some? I wasn’t sure, and it was pretty far away, but I figured that it couldn’t hurt to try. And that spinny source of mana was there, too, so I could do something fun while doing something useful, and maybe make it harder for the other ship to catch us.

This, I decided, was a great idea. I checked, and I had plenty of reaction mass for the thrusters. Some of those were busted, and I couldn’t fix them without materials, but my Navigation Matrix could balance them to get us going in the right direction. This was going to be great!

“We’re going to go fast now!” I announced to the Crew, and everyone that I could see, and who wasn’t sleeping of mana poisoning, stopped what they were doing. “Well, not fast-fast, but you know what I mean!”

I made doubly sure that the downness inside me was right, then turned toward Avara and fired some of my thrusters experimentally. Nobody even stumbled! Then I ramped up, giving the thrusters more and more reaction mass until we were veritably zooming along!

Then I got a message, and had to stop accelerating.

Reaction mass Delta-V to velocity ratio approaching dangerous levels.

That was all it said, but even though I wasn’t sure what some of the words meant, I understood the message. If I kept accelerating, soon I’d have used so much of my reaction mass, and I’d be going so fast, that I wouldn’t be able to stop where I wanted. And then we’d either hit Avara, or get thrown into the black somewhere, and I was pretty sure that both of those would be bad for the Crew.

Reaction mass storage below 50%. New production option: Emergency Reaction Mass Conversion.

Or, maybe not? I looked at the new production option and… it was probably best not to need to use it. It didn’t use mana, which would have been great. Instead it used pretty much anything to make more reaction mass. Which would be great, except that I’d be shooting that mass out my thrusters and into the black, and I didn’t have much of anything to spare.

Oh, well. We’d just have to go slow. At this rate it would take us a few days to reach the rings, with their delicious base elements and the spinning mana source, but that was fine.

“The unidentified ship is changing course to intercept,” Harvin reported. “If there was any doubt before, they’re definitely coming for us. Star, would you mind telling the captain?”

“Not at all, Harvin!” I said, then switched to Temeri’s cabin. “Temeri?” I said. “I promise that I’m not looking, so I can’t tell if you reacted just now. But Harvin says that the other ship is turning and is ‘definitely coming for us.’”

“Thank you, Star,” she replied, and it was weird to only hear her and not be able to see her while she talked. I couldn’t tell how her eyes changed, or the micro-movements of her facial muscles, or any of that good stuff. Then she stepped out of her cabin, and I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first.

Instead of her uniform or anything more comfortable, which was what I’d expected, she had on a suit of fabric covered in plates of Hull. She had a hollow ball of Hull in her hand, and on a strap around her neck was a stubby little thing, about a foot long with a handle close to one end. Right in front of the handle was a little lever, and in front of that lever sat something similar to a Small Base Mana Crystal.

I wasn’t sure what the stubby thing was, but I didn’t like it. It didn’t feel Wrong as such, but it gave me a bad feeling.

“Diviner Alder, report!” Temeri commanded as she strode onto the Bridge. Harvin jumped a little — he’d been focused on the ship, probably — then gawped at her for a few seconds before speaking.

“The unidentified vessel has corrected course to intercept us, Captain. With our change in velocity, we should make contact in just under three hours.”

“Right.” Temeri lifted her free hand and rubbed her eyes slowly with her thumb and forefinger. “Thank you, Alder. Star?”

“Yes, Temeri?”

“I wish you’d asked before accelerating us towards the most-likely-hostile unknowns.”

My non-existent stomach dropped. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!” I said. I felt awful! I hadn’t even thought about that! “I needed materials for repairs, and for construction and production, and there’s a mana source among the rings that’s really interesting and I wanted to see what it is, and—”

When Temeri interrupted me I felt close to tears. Another thing I couldn’t do, but it felt like I should be able to, and that was exactly how I felt. “It’s all right, Star,” she said. She sounded very tired, but I immediately felt better. “They were going to catch us either way. It was just a matter of time. I’d just have liked some more time to… it doesn’t matter. It is what it is. Can you at least buy us some more time?”

My Navigation Matrix did some quick calculations. “An hour, maybe? If I spend most of my reaction mass. Then I have to start converting Hull and other material into reaction mass, or we won’t make it to the rings.”

“Not worth it,” the captain said. “Save the reaction mass for maneuvering, if necessary, in case they fire on us. For now, I have something I’d like you to make.”

“All right, Temeri! Happy to help!” I said, feeling much better now that she’d forgiven me and was asking for my help again.

“You have a plan? Ah, Captain?” Harvin asked, and Temeri nodded.

“Yeah, Diviner Alder,” Temeri said. She still sounded very tired, but her voice was hard and cold now. I didn’t like it. “We’re going to let them board us.”

  *

“Mundus vessel. Keep your current speed and heading, and we won’t ventilate you. Prepare to be boarded, and don’t do anything stupid!”

The only message that the other ship sent was short and rude. Temeri had me send back a reply: “Understood, unknown vessel. Standing down.”

My big docking collar had gone away with the cargo hold, but that didn’t stop the other ship. They sent out a short, flexible tube that stuck itself over the hatch, immediately inflating with air. The moment it made contact, something funny happened. It was like I could feel the few inches of the tube closest to me, and that increased by a few inches every second! The tube was becoming me!

I was about to start telling the Crew the good news when I first saw, then felt, five figures jog down the tube. Four of the Other Crew had strange tools in their hands that reminded me of the stubby thing that the captain was now pointing at the hatch, and one had a pole with a mana crystal on it, like the Reinforced Focuses I had made for the mages. They all looked very tense. I was tense, too, and I felt like I should know why, but I couldn't quite grasp it.

On the tube side of the hatch, one of the Other Crew turned the big wheel in the middle of the hatch. On the Me side, the old Me side, the inside, my Crew waited behind thick slabs of Hull set into the corridor, their focuses and Temeri’s awful little stubby tool pointed at the hatch.

This all felt terrible. I knew that something terrible was about to happen, but I didn’t know what, and the Other Crew had threatened to put holes in my hull if we didn’t let them in.

On the tube side, the Other Crew at the hatch finished turning the wheel, but didn’t open it yet. They waited, the others arraying themselves with their tools pointed at the hatch. Two of them took little cylinders from their belts, pressing their thumbs on something at the top.

“Pop it,” the Other Crew with the focus growled, and the one with their hands on the hatch moved to the side, pulling the hatch open. Someone said, “Resistance!” and the two with the little cylinders threw the things through the hatch. Then everything was awful for a little while.