Starmind Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Hey, I got another chapter done! Again, no promises that this will be weekly or even every other week, but I've been getting the itch to work on this gain. No gonna lie, your appreciative comments help with that :)

The tone in this chapter is slightly darker. I'm trying for a mix between realistic reactions from the Crew, and Star being naive and reacting poorly to some things, but also so dang excited about everything that she bounces back. I never want her to get maudlin or mopey.

Please let me know what you think, either in the comments or in the Side Projects channel on the Discord.

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As the Crew had been setting up behind the slabs of Hull I had extruded for them from the floor and walls, Temeri had been telling them things like, “this isn't like the range,” “you’ll want to aim low,” and, “no kinetic area effects beyond the hatch. We don't want a blow-out.” None of those things made much sense to me until the hatch opened.

Things happened very quickly. As soon as the hatch opened, Temeri’s little tool started making a brrrp, brrrp sound, and from the front end of it little balls of condensed mana flashed down the hallway. At the same time, the Other Crew threw their cylinders. Varlanda muttered something and her focus flashed, making the cylinders slow down mid-air. The cylinders dropped, clanging and bouncíng and skittering before one end of each attached magnetically to the floor. Temeri cried, “Cover!” and threw herself back behind her slab of Hull, pressing herself to the wall, but only she and Harvin reacted quickly enough.

Temeri was closest to the hatch. Varlanda was behind her. One of the cylinders stopped in front of them, but the other went past, ending up right between Varlanda and Bekeri.

Varlanda stared at it in horror. I had no idea what the cylinders were, but from her reaction I knew that it was bad, so just in case I covered it in a thick dome of Hull that I extruded from the floor.

And good thing, too! I’d barely finished when both of the cylinders exploded, spraying tiny bits of something in all directions at a frightful speed. Those from the one in front of Temeri spattered harmlessly on the Hull inside the corridor, with some going straight down and past the Crew. I didn't want to imagine what they would have done to Temeri and Varlanda, but the Crew were soft. The bits, judging by how they barely deformed when they hit the Hull, were not.

At the back of the group Simeon screamed, crouching and covering his ears. He didn't look hurt, just scared. The Other Crew came through the hatch, screaming for my Crew to “drop their weapons, and surrender.” Their tools made similar sounds to Temeri's and sent little bullets of mana down the corridor, forcing my Crew to huddle while the one with the focus pointed it down the corridor. He started chanting rapidly, his focus began to glow, and I had had enough!

“Stop this!” I shouted. My Crew all winced but the Other Crew didn't react at all, so I switched to the speakers and repeated myself loud enough to cut through the noise. At the same time I extruded a thick slab of Hull across the corridor, separating the two groups. Then I did the same across the hatch, closing that wall off entirely.

There was a slight, unfortunate problem with that, but in my defense it wasn’t my fault. How was I to know that one of the Other Crew had taken another one of the cylinders and was throwing it as I extruded the wall? My attention was on my Crew, and before I knew it the cylinder had bounced off the new wall, and landed on the floor inside the little compartment I’d made. I only realized what was going on when the Other Crew started shouting and tried to run back the way they’d come, and by the time I started making a dome it was too late.

There was a bang inside the compartment. After that everything became a lot quieter.

“Thank you, Star,” Temeri said, leaning heavily against the wall once her shock had worn off. Varlanda was still staring at the bulge in the floor where I’d covered the exploding cylinder next to her — the grenade, something in my memory whispered — and was slowly sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. Harvin was gently patting Simeon on the back, telling him it was over, and everyone was fine. Only Bekeri seemed all right — he was studying one of the little fragments from the grenades with a frown on his face.

Wondering what had happened with the Other Crew, I took one look inside the compartment and then very deliberately did not look there again. I’d learned what the grenade would have done to Temeri and Varlanda, and I wished that I hadn’t. I wished that I could cry. It was terrible, and I felt awful for my part in it, even if it wasn’t my fault. And the Other Crew had tried to do that to my Crew on purpose!

Then everything came together, and I understood what had just happened.

“They tried to hurt you!” I said indignantly to the Crew. “They came here and boarded me to hurt you!”

“Yeah, Star,” Temeri said. “They did.”

“Why did they do that? And then what? What was the whole point of this? Why did they make me do that?”

“They probably wanted you. Our supplies. Us, if they could take us alive. You’re very valuable, Star. All ships are.”

“They wanted to take me? Use me?”

“Probably. Or—” Temeri stopped, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue. Then she sighed heavily. “Or they wanted you for parts. To take your components to repair other ships or stations.”

My mind reeled at what she was saying. They’d take me apart? Use me as glorified base materials? The idea that they might want to replace my Crew was bad enough, but that— what would happen then? Would I be just my Core, sitting in my housing, blind and deaf to anything beyond it? Or—

I had another horrible thought. What if they disconnected me from the mana reactor? Was I strong enough to power myself without it? If not, what would happen then? What would happen to me if my Core shut down?

“Star?” Temeri asked, and her voice was careful and gentle. I realized I’d been silent for several seconds.

“They were going to take you away from me,” I finally said. That was the most important part of every possible awful future I’d imagined. No matter what else happened, they’d wanted to separate me from my Crew. And if I couldn’t help my Crew — not a Crew, my Crew — what good was I?

“They were,” she said, still so very gentle. “But you stopped them, Star. They didn’t hurt us. Thank you.” She looked toward the new wall that separated her from the boarders. “What did you do to them?”

“Nothing! I just trapped them in a ten foot stretch of the corridor so they could calm down. But then one of them threw a grenade and— they’re not your problem anymore. I’ll let you know when I’ve cleaned up.” I was already planning how to do that without looking inside.

“Gods beyond, I felt them,” Simeon moaned from the back. He was very pale, and looked like he might cry. “All five of them, only a few seconds apart. Oh, gods!” Without another word he shook Harvin off and ran to the “head,” as they called it, and brought back up all the nutrient paste he’d eaten.

“I’ll go check on him,” Harvin said, following slowly.

“You do that,” Temeri said. She’d crouched by Varlanda. “Hey, Enchantress Tell. Are you gonna be okay?”

“I thought I was going to die,” Varlanda said. “There was a grenade, right there, and I thought, this is it! This is how I die! Not of old age, not in some magical experiment gone wrong, not even in an accident. I was going to die because someone killed me. I’d never get to…” she trailed off and kept staring.

“That’s life in the Astral Navy, Enchantress. So, are you going to be okay?”

Varlanda looked up. “I don’t know, Captain. I haven’t a clue.”

“I wish I could help,” I said. Varlanda was clearly hurting, and I felt terrible because I didn’t know what to do about that.

Varlanda laughed, but it didn’t sound right. Like she was laughing because she didn’t know what else to do. “You saved my life, Star! You’ve helped plenty. Thank you.”

“Oh, okay then.” It really didn’t feel like enough, but I’d have to take her word for it until I figured out something better. Until then, I would just have to let the Crew take care of each other while I figured out what to do, both with the mess in the compartment and with the other ship.

The first step was to get rid of what was left of the Other Crew. And the first step of that was to look inside the compartment again. I really didn’t want to — my first idea had been to just shift some things around so that the compartment ended up outside, and then make a bunch of tiny holes all over the Hull there. The vented atmosphere wouldn’t be too much, and it should carry the bits away into the black. But a big part of me refused to be so wasteful. No, I needed to ship up and see what I was dealing with.

I activated some of my senses inside the compartment, and was immediately glad that I didn’t have a stomach. There were organic bits all over, many of them in places they really shouldn’t be. The fragments of the grenade hadn’t necessarily stopped when they hit someone and had bounced around quite a lot. Still, I steeled myself and got to work.

First I separated the organic bits from the manufactured bits. Most of both categories were broken, but there were a few manufactured bits that still worked. I considered putting the organic bits in the Waste Storage Matrix, but again something in me rebelled. “Ghoulish” was a word that came to mind, and I got the feeling that the Crew wouldn’t appreciate eating or using products made from the unfortunate boarders. Instead I packed the remains up as small as I could, made another, smaller compartment around that, and started slowly moving it to the outside.

For the manufactured bits, anything broken was entirely useless. I broke those down into base elements that I stored away in my rapidly dwindling storage space, and found that I simply didn’t have enough room unless I wanted to put the rest with the waste. But, once I’d filled everything out, I got a message!

New construction option: Basic Multi-Purpose Storage Matrix.

That was great! And thanks to the base elements from the things I’d recycled, I could actually make one of these Matrices, along with the required Housing. Looking closer, though, I realized that I’d need Varlanda to actually make it functional, and ideally Bekeri to help me lay things out efficiently. The same was true of the Development Matrix, which would let me figure out how to improve myself, and the Mana Crystal Condensation Matrix, which would create mana crystals for me from ambient mana, without me draining myself every time I wanted a crystal.

That could wait. Varlanda was still sitting on the floor, speaking quietly with the captain, and she didn’t need me pestering her about getting back to work. Instead I took the elements I couldn’t store and separated them into little airtight boxes, spending some of them to make the Hull I needed, too. It was much less space efficient than the Storage Matrices, but it would do.

With the few things that didn’t look broken I wanted to take a closer look, in case it was something the Crew could use. Between the five Other Crew, I’d managed to piece together one example of the suits they’d been wearing. It was similar to what Temeri had put on, and I hoped it might do some good. As I looked it over, another message appeared.

New production option: analysis by a Manufacturing Matrix required to unlock. 

New construction option: Manufacturing Matrix.

I happily held on to the things, carefully washing the blood off before storing them. I had all kinds of options now, once things returned to normal. And it wasn’t like I’d ever get bored. I had a whole new ship to get to know!

While the Crew settled down after the excitement, and I looked over the remains in the compartment, the tube connecting me to the other ship had slowly become part of me. I’d been a little apprehensive about what might happen once I reached the hull of the ship — I knew from my Crew’s reaction that I was different from other ships, but for all I knew I might be about to meet another Starmind. Sadly — and to my relief — I didn’t. As the other ship became part of me, inch by inch, spreading along every surface, no one challenged me. No one opposed me. But no one welcomed me, either.

I couldn’t help but be a little sad at that. It made things easier, but it would be nice to have someone to talk to. I liked my Crew — of course I did — but they were Crew, with Crew problems. I liked helping them, but it would have been nice to get some help myself sometimes.

Ah, well. At least this way I didn’t have to feel guilty about assimilating all the materials and components I found. And there were a lot of those! Even before I assimilated anything, I could feel the layout and contents of the ship. All along the inside of the hull there were pipes with liquids in them. Further in were all kinds of compartments, with all kinds of things. Cabins, like my Crew had, a bridge, a machine shop, a reactor room, a crystal chamber… pretty much anything I had, the other ship had too. It even had a cargo hold! It was almost empty, but there was some stuff in it! In fact, there was stuff everywhere! The Other Crew hadn’t been nearly as tidy as my Crew were, and they had just left things lying wherever.

Making the other ship part of me went slowly. While I assimilated the tunnel I could do a few inches every second, but once I reached the hull and started spreading out, that slowed to a few inches every minute. There was just so much more to make into me! While the ship was smaller than me, it was still about ninety feet from end to end, shaped a bit like an egg with a narrower front and a wider back. Even starting from just a bit off center it was going to take a couple of hours.

It was lucky that the crystal chamber was close to where I’d started. Until I made that part of me I couldn’t really control anything, and feeling everything but not being able to adjust the composition of the atmosphere or things like that was just wrong. Not that the crystals in there were very well designed, or made, or even taken care of. At least not compared to mine; my crystals were excellent, and judging by their condition Varlanda took very good care of them indeed. 

Really, nothing was very well taken care of. The more I assimilated of the other ship, the more things I found that badly needed fixing or to be replaced completely, all the way from hull plating and thrusters to hydraulic valves. Either the Other Crew didn’t care very much about their ship, or they just didn’t have access to the things they needed. Both of those possibilities made me upset, for very different reasons. I didn’t like the idea of them taking poor care of their ship, because they’d been trying to steal me, and if they’d managed they wouldn’t have taken good care of me. But I also didn’t like the idea that they’d been trying to steal me, and ended up as distributed fleshy bits, because they were desperate.

Ugh. What a mess. At least now my Crew should be all right. I had more reaction mass now, and with a whole other ship’s worth of stuff and materials the Crew should be more comfortable. Maybe we’d even be able to fix that Teleportation Matrix they’d told me about, the one that brought us out here. Then we could go back to Mundus and—

And what? What would happen then? Would they leave me? Temeri and Varlanda and Simeon and Bekeri and Harvin? Would they go back to wherever they were before they became my Crew? I didn’t want that! It would be as bad as if the Other Crew had taken me. I wanted my Crew! What was I supposed to do without them?

I couldn't even think about it.

I’d have to talk to them. Later. When they were feeling better I’d explain how important it was that they stay with me. And maybe we couldn’t ever repair the Teleportation Matrix, anyway! I didn't have any schematics for it, and Varlanda had said it was burned out, badly enough tgat she hadn't even bothered to look at it yet. Then we’d have to take the long, slow way back to Mundus, and to do that we’d need a lot of supplies to make the Crew’s journey comfortable. That would take time.

Yeah. I’d talk to them about it. Later.

While the assimilation continued I checked in on the Crew. I’d been so distracted, looking at all the stuff in the other ship and thinking about things, that I hadn’t paid them much attention. Temeri was nowhere to be found, so I assumed that she was in her cabin, where I’d promised not to pay attention. Simeon was back in the room with the rejuvenation field, so I made sure that was working optimally. He was still sleeping off his mana poisoning and really shouldn’t have been woken at all. Harvin and Bekeri were sitting at the table in the kitchenette part of the recreation area, drinking something from very small glasses — they both looked very tired and had trouble talking properly, but seemed happy enough. And Varlanda was in the crystal chamber, staring at the housing that held my Core.

Varlanda was in the crystal chamber, staring at the housing that held my Core. Said Core nearly cracked with fright. But she wasn’t doing anything. She was just sitting there. Staring. At my Core.

I considered asking her what she was doing, but it felt like a mean and hurtful thing to say. I also considered asking if she needed any help, but for once I really didn’t want to. I should be trusting her, but that was my Core she was staring at. So I tried to think of something actually helpful to say, and ended up with, “Varlanda? I don’t think it’s good for you to be alone right now.”

Varlanda shrugged where she sat.

“Harvin and Bekeri are in the recreational area. Why don’t you join them?”

“Don’t know what to say,” she replied, still staring at my Core. Which, to be fair, was as good a place as any to look while talking to me and better than most.

“I don’t think that’s a problem,” I said, trying to encourage her. “Neither do they, but they’re talking anyway.”

“What are they doing?”

“They have a bottle of some clear liquid and are drinking it in tiny glasses,” I said, happy to be able to answer a question completely for once.

She laughed, but she didn’t sound or look very happy. “Rec room, huh? All right. To hell with it, why not.” Then she got to her feet, went to the rec room, and found a tiny glass of her own.