Starmind Chapter 6 (Patreon)

So, some of you all seem to really like this, which is a very strong motivator for me to keep working on it! That means that the "I'll just get a few hundred words down" factor is strong, thus this chapter.

This week on Starmind: Questions of cannibalism! Revelations of weirdness! Star being unintentionally creepy! Enjoy!

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“You know— you know what I was thinking about? When that grenade was about to—” Varlanda dropped the tiny glass she was playing with. It bounced once before I grabbed it telekinetically and put it back down inside a small, wet circle on the table. “When it was about to paint the wall with me?” she continued, as though nothing had happened.

“What?” Bekeri asked, pouring the last tiny bit of clear liquid into Varlanda’s glass. He held the bottle upside down for a while then put it back on the table with a shrug. It almost fell over, so I righted it, then thought better of it and removed the bottle to the waste storage.

Nobody noticed.

Varlanda threw her glass back, a funny grimace overtaking her whole face before she continued. I couldn’t help but wonder why they drank whatever it was if it tasted so bad, but at least it was all gone now. “My grandparents,” she said after catching her breath, “Mom’s parents, they had this house. By a lake. Where Mom grew up. And they had this— this boat. Big one.”

“Oh, with the big awning and the table in the middle!” I added, happy to be able to contribute. Bekeri and Harvin just listened.

“Yeah! Right, yeah. Not fancy, but really nice. Could fit ten people on it — long as some were kids. Went out on the lake in that boat all— all the time with my cousins. Best times of my life. But then after Grandpa died it broke down and that was it. Now my uncle— my uncle’s fixing it. Took over the house and all, you know? Fixing it with my cousin Spera. She’s a Material Manipulator. And we were supposed to go— go out on the lake this summer. All of us. Reunion, kind of thing.”

Varlanda ran her hand through her short, curly hair and all the way down to her neck. I was starting to wonder if she was finished when she continued, “And I looked at that grenade. Those pirates or whatever, they were gonna kill me, and all I could think was, ‘But we were gonna go on the boat!’ I’ve been looking forward to it! Felt so unfair, you— you know?”

“Yer goan th’ boat,” Harvin said. He sounded very tired, and when he patted Varlanda’s shoulder he missed the first time.

Bekeri nodded. “Star will get us back,” he said, speaking slowly and enunciating very carefully. His big ears lay flat and relaxed, almost drooping from the sides of his head.

“I think you all need to go to bed,” I said. They all looked tired, not just Harvin. They’d been through a lot in the last thirty or so hours, and while they’d napped a little in the sick bay, I was pretty sure that they needed some proper, uninterrupted sleep.

“Someone needs to man the bridge,” Bekeri said, still speaking very precisely. He was right — it was important to have someone on watch at all times. But his eyes were only half open, so it wouldn’t be him.

Then I had a great idea! “I can keep an eye on things and wake you if anything happens!’ I told them. “I don’t ever sleep, and I’m always watching, anyway. I know everything that happens inside me — except in the captain’s cabin. I’ve promised not to look there — and I can see for thousands and thousands and thousands of miles in every direction if I need to!”

“That’s right!” Varlanda said, rising suddenly. She swayed a little, steadying herself on the table. “Gods beyond, Star. You’re so— so helpful!” She giggled a little. Then her eyebrows knit and she said, “How’d you know about the boat? Sim tell you?”

“Oh, no!” I said. “I just remembered it. The boat and the lake mostly. And fishing.”

Varlanda became very still, except for her eyes, which blinked rapidly. Then she said, “I’m going to bed. Can’t talk now. Star, can you remind me when I wake up? That we need to talk? About the boat?”

“Of course, Varlanda! By the way, can you help Harvin? He seems to have fallen under the table.”

  *

Temeri was the first to wake up, since she was the first to bed and wasn’t sick. At just a few minutes after 0600 she walked out of her cabin wearing her casual clothes, without anything on them that said that she was Captain Carlon. She looked well rested. Quite upbeat, even.

“Good morning, Star!” she said as soon as she came outside her door. “Anything to report?”

“Good morning, Temeri! And yes! I finished assimilating the other ship, and I gained a level!”

Temeri’s eye twitched oddly, and she said, “Thank you, Star. Just a moment,” before turning around and going back inside her cabin. There were some odd sounds, almost like muted screaming, and when she came out again she was a little red in the face. Some of her hair had come loose from the big, brown bun she always wore it in, too. “Okay, Star!” she said cheerfully. “How about you tell me all about it while I have some breakfast?”

“I’d love to!”

While Temeri ate some nutrient paste, I told her all about how I’d made the docking umbilical part of me, and then how I’d spent a few hours turning the other ship into more of me, too. I told her all about how messy it was in there, how it didn’t even have a Starmind, and how poorly the Other Crew took care of their ship.

I also told her how I’d recycled the mess in the compartment where they’d blown themselves up. She stopped eating her nutrient paste at that point, slowly taking the spoon out of her mouth.

“Star,” she said very calmly. “What did you do with the bodies?”

“I got rid of them!”

Temeri stared at her spoon, a few inches from her mouth and still half full of nutrient paste. “How, Star? How did you get rid of them?”

“Hmm? Oh, I packed them up very small and jettisoned them.”

Her face relaxed, like she was relieved for some reason, and she said, “Oh. Right. Of course. That’s what I thought you’d do.” Then she put her spoonful of paste in her mouth and swallowed before saying, “Please, go on.”

“So, once I finished turning the other ship into more of me, I got this message:”

Starmind has reached Level 2! Upgrade Core to receive benefits: Increased maximum Core integrity. Increased maximum mana accumulation speed. Increased maximum assimilation speed. Increased maximum skill level. Increased maximum complexity for item teleportation.

That message had excited me, but with it came some information that made me nervous. I couldn’t just upgrade my Core myself — I needed a skilled technician to do it for me. But while that made me very uneasy, I really wanted my Core upgraded. More than I didn’t want anyone to get near it, even.

“So, um, I need Varlanda to look at my Core,” I told Temeri after explaining. “Bekeri’s very good with a lot of things, but I don’t think he could do it.”

“Tell is the Enchantress,” Temeri agreed. She was sitting with her head in her hands.

“Oh, but I will need Bekeri to make the housings and the inert crystals for my new Matrices! And then Varlanda to finish them. I don’t know why, but I can’t do it on my own.”

“...not supposed to be able to self-improve at all,” Temeri said, so low that it wasn’t even a whisper. But I heard her anyway and of course she knew that.

“I guess not, but I do a lot of things I’m not supposed to be able to,” I said. “Like telepathy, and telekinesis, and assimilating ships!”

She jumped in her seat when I answered her and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she was more tired than she looked and had dozed off? That would explain why she spoke so quietly and why she spoke normally after that. I’d woken her up! But she was a busy woman and had gotten up early on her own, so keeping her awake was probably a good thing.

“And we’re so glad for it, Star,” she said. “You, ah, you feel strongly about upgrading your core and building these new Matrices, do you?”

“I do! I’d really rather not go anywhere before I get everything done, if that’s all right. And if I connect the two parts of me properly I won’t need the shoddy crystals in the new bit, so we should be able to use those for materials!”

“That’s great, Star! And these new Matrices, they’ll let you…?”

“Improve myself and develop and manufacture more complicated items!” I said. I was so excited! This was going to be so good!

“That’s… that sounds really useful, Star,” Temeri said, running her fingertips through her hair so hard that more of it came loose from the bun. “That’s really great. I’ll tell Artificer Bekeri and Enchantress Tell to help you, then.”

“Thank you!”

Temeri didn’t say anything. I went back to tidying up the new parts of me — there was so much tidying to do! — but I got the feeling that the conversation wasn’t over. I kept some of my attention on Temeri, and after a while she sat up straight and clasped her hands on the table. “Hey, Star?” she said.

“Yes, Temeri?”

“Is any of this going to help us get back to Mundus? Are we going to get our crew home?”

I didn’t even like to think about that. But I liked the sadness in her voice even less. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I think it could help, but I can’t even feel the Teleportation Matrix you all talked about. I’m going to try, though.”

“All right. I appreciate that.”

“Of course, Temeri. I’m happy to help.”

The next to rise was Bekeri, which was too bad for him. It meant that he was the one who had to explain to Temeri, who was very much Captain Carlon at that moment, why he wasn’t awake until well past 0700, and why there was no one on watch when she herself got up. Temeri didn’t get loud, but she got very… sharp. Expressions like “dereliction of duty” and “endangering the crew” came up, things that resonated deep within me in a very bad way. And poor Bekeri didn’t even defend himself! He just stood there, back ramrod straight, eyes forward and staring somewhere past Temeri’s collar bone, and ears drooping. “Yes, Captain!” he’d say, or, “No, Captain!” until I felt I had to step in before Temeri said something she’d regret.

“Very well,” Temeri said after I explained about sending Bekeri, Varlanda, and Harvin to bed. “Artificer Bekeri, I will overlook your mistake, this once. Have some breakfast, then ask Star to fill you in on what she needs. And Star?”

Oh, I did not like having that tone turned on me. “Yes, Captain?” I said. I hoped that I kept the trepidation out of my voice. I spoke directly into her head, though, so that might have been a vain hope.

“I want one of the… organic crew on watch at all times. Please don’t ask them all to go off duty at once, again.”

“No, Captain,” I said, “I won’t. Sorry, Captain.”

“That’s all right, Star. I’m sure you were just trying to help.”

At a little after 0800 Varlanda got up, followed closely by Harvin. Varlanda got a talking to from Temeri, while Harvin only got an eye-twitch, a curled upper lip, and orders to report to the sick bay. When he’d gone Temeri muttered something very low under her breath about “complete breakdown of discipline” before asking me to “crank the  rejuvenation field as high as it’ll go, please,” then going to the bridge to look at all the automatic reports my systems generated.

I did. And I brought Harvin some nutrient paste, too, with some extras added to it. His electrolytes were all over the place!

Meanwhile, Bekeri was in the artifice bay talking enthusiastically as he worked. “You know this is the first time I used the crystal fabricator?” he asked. “This one, that is. This ship is— I mean, you, Star, are so new that there hasn’t been any need. And you say you got these Matrices from the other ship?”

“I did! They’re not necessary anymore, so I thought we could do something fun with them!”

I’d fetched the Matrices in question after I connected my halves. I’d tried teleporting them, but it hadn’t worked. I got a message about it and everything:

Cannot teleport item without severe degradation. Magnitude of complexity exceeds maximum supported by Core.

That didn’t seem to matter much when I sucked something into my waste storage, but that made sense. Kind of, at least. Anything I put there was going to be turned into elements or simple materials anyway.

Luckily, since the Matrices were so simple they were quite small, and I’d been able to just float them over using telekinesis. They were now in the process of being reduced to a kind of mana-rich goop inside the fabricator, so that Bekeri could grow new, blank crystals. 

“So, these schematics,” Bekeri asked, “you just found them?”

“They popped into my head!”

“Fascinating! I must say, Star, I’m excited to see what will come of this!” He fiddled with some controls, then moved to the deposition lathe, where he looked at some numbers and adjusted a setting or two. “There! That should run automatically, now. Two blank Matrix crystals should be ready in eight hours or so, and the matrix housings should be done two hours before that. You can have the mana crystals ready by then, yes? Good! Now, how about we take a look at this new addition of yours?”

“I’d love that!” I told him. I already knew a lot about my new half, but it would be good to have Bekeri take a walk around and see if there was anything that stood out to him.

“Excellent. I’ll tell the Captain that I’m ready, then. I’m sure she’ll want to come along.”

I liked talking to Bekeri. I liked all my Crew, but Bekeri was just so curious about everything! When I’d told him that I’d assimilated the other ship his ears perked all the way up, and he’d asked very politely if he could see it. It was nice to see someone be as excited about things as I was.

While he and the Captain put on their pointless pressure suits — I told them that the air was perfectly fine and that they didn’t need them, but they wanted to be careful — Varlanda was back in the crystal chamber.

“You’re sure?” she asked for the third time, standing in front of my Core. The housing was closed, but I still felt a bit of unease at having her so near. I knew that Varlanda was very good with crystals. She wouldn’t mess anything up on accident. But that also meant that she could very easily mess something up on purpose, and while I didn’t think that she ever would… it was my Core. I didn’t know what would happen to me if something went wrong, or if my Core Integrity went to zero, but I knew it wouldn’t be good.

“I’m sure,” I lied. I didn’t like lying to her, but this needed to be done. “I’m releasing the locks now.”

There was a soft hum, then a sequence of clicks, all around the middle of the housing. Then the top half retracted into the ceiling about a foot and the bottom half into the floor the same amount. And there I was.

“I’ll never get over how pretty you are,” Varlanda said. “An absolute work of art.”

“Oh, stop!” I said. I didn’t giggle. That would have been highly inappropriate to the situation. But I definitely felt like I should be blushing. “Anyway, you’re just complimenting yourself, with how many modifications you’ve made.”

Varlanda froze. This was the second time she’d done the exact same thing in only a few hours, going entirely still except for her eyes, which blinked rapidly. “You— you know about that, do you? Want to tell me how?”

“I remember!”

“You… remember?”

“Of course I do! All those hours in the lab after everyone went home, spoofing the security system… I’m not sure what that means, but of course I remember! Good times!”

Varlanda was starting to sweat a little, despite the perfectly comfortable temperature. “Sure, yeah, they were,” she agreed. “Just… Star, you weren’t even finished then, much less installed or powered up.”

“Oh. Weird.” It really was. It also didn’t feel like I remembered any of that from my perspective. Any of my perspectives. It was more like I remembered working on the Core myself. Kind of like the boat, where I remembered going out fishing. With myself. Seeing a small Varlanda with a fishing rod.

“Anyway,” I continued, “the schematics for the changes you need to make are on your slate. Just make sure to wear properly insulated gloves, okay? I’m not powering down for this, or for anything, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Sure. Yeah.” Varlanda woke her slate and found the schematics I’d loaded onto it, then gathered her etching, deposition, measuring, and mana infusion tools on a portable work table, which she fixed around the housing. “This, uh, this reminds me,” she said as she put everything in order. “Was there something we were supposed to talk about?”

“Oh, yes!” I’d completely forgotten until she mentioned it! “You wanted to talk about the boat! Your grandparents’ boat!”

“Right. Let’s… once I’m done here, all right?”

“Sure! Do you want me to wake Simeon when it’s time?”

“Yeah, Star. I think that might be a good idea. Let’s talk about it in the sick bay, so he doesn’t have to get up.” She looked at the schematics again. “So what’s this supposed to do? The schematics are straight forward enough, but I can’t tell what the goal is. It makes me kind of uneasy, if I’m being honest. There’s a lot more room for mistakes that way.”

“Oh, this is so I get the benefits of my new level!” I said. Despite my nerves, I was brimming with excitement. I was so close, now! “I leveled up once I assimilated the other ship!”

“You WHAT!?”