Starmind Chapter 8 (Patreon)

If this turns into a book I'm going to call it Ship Up And Shape Out! (thanks to jthrr for the idea) ---------------------------------------

If this turns into a book I'm going to call it Ship Up And Shape Out!

(thanks to jthrr for the idea)

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“I’ve got it!”

Varlanda oozed satisfaction, a smug grin on her face as she scrolled on her slate, looking quickly back and forth between it and the layer of crystal she’d isolated. “Yes!” she hissed, switching to another layer, and another, and another.

“What?” I asked, eager to find out what had her so excited. “Did you finish? Are you done?”

“No, no, not yet. But I figured it out! Where all these unexpected rune scripts and glyphs come from! I thought it was just random at first because they didn't make sense, but then when I looked at them in overlay, things started looking familiar. And now I’ve got it! Here!” She pointed at something that meant nothing to me. “This, together with this, and this, and this—” She quickly switched between several layers, zooming to the right regions with a speed and confidence that just made me admire her so much. “All of these together, even though they're spread out, they form one of the Astral switching scripts from the Teleportation Matrix! And they use some of my interconnectivity modifications to do it! And I bet, I’ll damn well bet you, Star, that there's more of them! Still doesn't explain the weird distortions in the mana field, and I have no bloody clue how it could have happened, especially not without ruining your Core, but I’ve got one piece of one puzzle!”

“That’s amazing, Varlanda! I’m so proud of you!” Oh, I just wanted to hug her, but without a body I had to settle for using my telekinesis to put some gentle pressure on her shoulders. Not quite as good, but it would have to do.

“I am pretty damn good, aren't I?” She laughed, then put her hand on her own shoulder. She turned her head, looking confused for a moment, then said, “Was that you, Star?”

“Yes! Was that all right? Did you not like it?”

“No, it’s fine. It felt nice, I mean. I was surprised, that’s all.” She turned back to her tools and her slate for a while before saying, “I wouldn't mind if you continued. Can you do neck rubs? My shoulders are getting a little stiff.”

“Sure thing, Varlanda!” I got right to it. I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do, but messing a bit with which frequencies and what polarization I was paying attention to let me see a few places where her neck and shoulder muscles were bunching in weird ways. I went to work on those, and she seemed to like it.

“Oh, that's good,” Varlanda said, shifting like she was trying to press her shoulder into my non-existent hand. “Can you do it harder?”

“Sorry. This is as much force as I can use. I think I need a higher level in the skill to press harder.”

Varlanda worked silently again for a bit, then said, “And you can get that once the upgrade’s done?”

“That's what the message said!”

She became very determined in her work after that.

Once Varlanda was fully focused again, I did a quick check on the others. Simeon was back asleep; mana poisoning was no joke. Harvin was looking quite frustrated about something, but when I tried to talk to him he just said that he wanted to concentrate and asked if I could leave him alone unless something important came up. Temeri and Bekeri were taking inventory of the things they’d found on New Me. They were happy to talk, but all they wanted to talk about was what was worth keeping and what might be better to recycle. I was happy to help and have my say, but it was boring, so I barely paid attention at all.

“Sorry, Temeri, is there anything you need me to do?” I asked when there was a pause. They were looking through the lockers in what could generously be called the kitchen.

“Something helpful, you mean?” she asked, opening a sealed cylinder. She took a sniff, gagged, and handed it to Bekeri.

He also took a sniff, and his ears perked up as he said, “Ooo, homemade glera!”

He put it in the “keep” pile.

“Something helpful to do would be wonderful,” I told them. Anything to help pass the time until Varlanda was done.

“Well… you're keeping us all alive which is already very helpful, but I guess you’d like something more active? Your limit for what you float around is two pounds or so, right?”

“Right!”

She gestured to the keep pile. “Almost everything here weighs less than that. If you could move it over to the rec room and store it, that’d be great.”

“I can do that!” First I tried teleporting, but only a few of the liquids weren’t “too complex.” So, I started picking things up and floating them out the door. Just carrying things wasn't very interesting, so I experimented a little. I figured out how many things I could pick up at a time: eight, but the total mass couldn’t be more than eight pounds. I tried fiddling with the gravity a little until Temeri asked me to please stop, to see if that changed anything. It didn't. Eight things, or eight pounds of mass at Mundus standard gravity, no matter what.

I did find that if I kind of juggled things, I could keep more of them in the air, but that didn't end so great. And that was before I suddenly lost all my telekinesis — I asked Varlanda, and she said that she'd just bypassed something. I just really hoped that the Crew wouldn't notice that some of the jars were a little scuffed and dented, and that one of the bags rustled a lot more than it did before I moved it.

It occurred to me that I could probably just push a lot of things around if I turned off the gravity, but I should probably talk to the Crew before I did that.

When I’d moved the food that I could, there were only one or two things left that the Crew would have to move themselves. The “recycle” pile was still there. I couldn't just dump it all into waste storage, since that was full — well, not quite, but there needed to be some space there for when someone used the head. I needed to break the stuff in that pile down into elements, but those elements would need to go into little airless cubes, which needed to go… somewhere.

I needed a cargo hold.

“Temeri? Bekeri?” I said to get their attention. They’d moved on to a big pile of stuff that they’d collected from the Other Crews cabins. “I’m going to need to take some of the hull from this part of me to rebuild the cargo hold. Are there any bits that you're definitely done with?”

“Artificer?” Temeri looked at Bekeri.

“Oh, most of the drive and engineering sections at the rear, I’d say. Though I’d appreciate it if you transfer or seal off any tools or instruments, just in case. They were quite scuffed, but I’d like a second look.”

“Well, Star, you heard Artificer Bekeri. Have at it!”

“Great! Thank you!”

I immediately got to work sealing off the reactor room, the drive section, and the sorry excuse for an artificer bay. Then I teleported out all of the air and all the simple tools, followed by big chunks of the hull. I couldn't just put the hull in place, since it wasn't proper Hull, but with a bit of rejiggering using the materials I’d collected, I could easily make enough Hull to even myself out.

I’d never seen myself from outside, but there were some schematics in my archives. I used those to get a rough idea, then I just went with what felt right. I was nice and round, about 120 ft wide and half as tall, with a kind of flat bottom and a rounded top. After the accident where the cargo hold went missing it looked a bit like someone had taken a bite out of me, with a dent where I’d had to fold the top in to close the tears in the wall of the crystal chamber. I wanted to stay symmetrical, so I needed a lot of Hull! Luckily, now I had a lot of material to work with. I stripped away big chunks of the outer shell of New Me, where Bekeri had said that it was all right, and used the materials I’d collected to make Hull.

The first thing I did was to fix the dent above the crystal chamber, and return the chamber to its proper size and shape. Varlanda didn’t appreciate that. I had to apologize a lot before she calmed down. Then I laid in Hull according to the plans, first making a new cargo hold that went right up to where New Me overlapped with how I should look, then eating away at the overlapping bit so that my old body was complete, and it overlapped the new one instead of the other way around.

I ended up looking a bit like… I wasn’t sure.

On the bridge I said, “Hey, Harvin! I sent you a picture on your slate. What does it look like?”

Harvin jumped in his chair. “Star?”

“Yep! Check your slate and tell me what it looks like. Please?”

“Right. Sure.” He looked at his slate, turned it a little, and said, “It looks like someone smashed an egg and a pastry together. Why?”

“No reason! Thank you!” 

I looked like a pastry being smashed into an egg. But that was fine. Once we cut loose whatever we weren't keeping I’d just look like a pastry: sleek and symmetrical and not the least bit clunky.

With everything safely air tight, I broke down the tunnel connecting the new body’s docking collar to the hatch — I’d moved the docking collar to my hull, since I couldn’t make a new one. Then I stored away the spare materials, and there we were! New cargo hold!

There might be a small problem with maneuvering, but that couldn’t be helped. I’d lost three of the maneuvering thrusters in the accident, along with a couple of rotational thrusters, and I couldn’t replace them. Not yet, anyway. I’d just have to rely on the ones I had left. The main thrusters at the center gimballed anyway, and they were fine! We’d be fine!

Shaping myself out had taken most of my attention. I’d only given the simplest of answers whenever someone asked me a question, telling them what I was doing, and I remembered Varlanda asking me to tell her when I was done. She wasn't in the crystal chamber anymore, but the housing for my Core was still open, her tools still fixed inside it. Varlanda herself was in the rec room — she was on a bench, lying back against a wall and reading on her slate with a mug and an empty bowl beside her.

“I'm done now!” I told her, eager to find out what she wanted, and to get her to continue working.

“Oh, great! Just a moment.” She put the slate on the table, finished her drink, and put her mug and bowl in the washer. “I was almost finished, and I thought you'd want to be totally there for it, so to speak.”

“I do! Thank you, Varlanda!” Almost done? She was almost done! My Core upgrade was almost finished! “Go! Go! Hurry!”

Varlanda laughed. “Calm down!” she said, but she did walk much faster than she usually would. I was pretty sure that she wanted to see what would happen as much as I did.

“Okay, Star,” she said once she was in position, with her tools ready and prepared to recast her spells. “There’s not much left to do, and I’m going to drain the rest of the mana crystal for this, so everything should be just fine. Are you ready?”

“Ready? I can't wait! Don't make me wait, Varlanda!” I didn't quite like how I sounded, but I couldn't help it. I wanted this upgrade more than I’d ever wanted anything!

Varlanda laughed again. “Okay, okay! All I need to do is replace part of this script. It’s all stuff I haven't seen before, but it should be quick and easy, especially with the mana crystal. Bypassing n—

“—and that should be it! And… oh, damn!” Varlanda grinned hugely. “I got a level out of that! What about you, Star? How’re you feeling?”

A few things had happened. As far as I could tell, everyone had just instantly moved. Some, a little, like Varlanda and her brother. Some, a lot; Harvin had gone from the bridge to the rec room, Temeri was on the bridge, wearing different clothes, and Bekeri was taking a matrix crystal out of the fabricator and storing it. A housing stood ready nearby.

And I had a message waiting. Two, even!

Core upgrade to level 2 complete!

Varlanda Tell has reached Crew level 2!

When I checked the time, nearly three quarters of an hour had passed.

“Varlanda,” I said. “What just happened?”

“I leveled!” she said happily. “And I did some of the finest Matrix work of my life, so no wonder! And… oh, that’s odd.” Then she caught up with the worry in my tone. “Wait, did you mean something different? Is something wrong?”

“I don't know! I feel good, really good, but it's like things just happened without me. You started and then you were done, with nothing in between.”

“Like you lost time?”

“I guess. Varlanda, I'm a little scared. I don't like this!”

She slumped a little. “Oh, gods, I'm sorry. I had no idea! We were talking the whole time and you said everything was fine! I— Those scripts must have been involved with your memory, somehow.”

“We talked?”

“Sure! You were asking if I agreed with Bekeri and the captain about the order we should get the new Matrices running. I’ll tell you the same thing I said ten minutes ago: if this Mana Condensation Matrix does what you think it does, then having that running for the extra few days it'll take to make the others could make a big difference. Depending on how quickly it works, of course.”

“Yeah, all right.” I still wasn't happy about that. The Development Matrix was the one I really wanted, and the Manufacturing Matrix would let me get new production options and who knew what else. But with all three Crew I’d talked to in agreement…

Bleh. I’d go along with it, but I didn't have to like it. And that wasn't what bothered me most right then anyway.

“Do you think I’m all right?” I asked. The words were hard to say. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know if something had gone wrong, and if anyone would know, it was Varlanda.

“Yeah, Star,” she said, and her voice was so confident that I had to believe her. “I think you're better than ever.”

We didn't have time to get started on the Matrix that day nor for that talk with Simeon. By the time Varlanda finished upgrading my Core, it was past 1700 hours, and on Temeri’s order the Crew all gathered in the rec room, even Simeon — though Temeri wanted him back in the sick bay and the rejuvenation field for the night. They opened up some of the food we’d brought over, Simeon used some of his magic to make sure that it wasn't bad in any way, and then they cooked a “real meal.” It was fun — I got to help!

By some kind of silent agreement, nobody talked about the Other Crew or the attack. They talked about the mana source among Avara’s rings, and they talked about the one near the moon Erebus, but never about the ship that had intercepted us and was now part of me. Mostly, though, they talked about home. Their home, back on Mundus. Not mine; I was my own home, in a way. I didn’t like how much they seemed to miss their homes — because it made them sad and made me think about them possibly leaving at some point — but it was still interesting to listen to them.

The way they talked, about family and hobbies and simple likes and dislikes, also made it clear that they didn’t really know each other that well. I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I knew that they’d all met for the first time a week before boarding, which was only a few days ago. At the same time, I had this idea that of course they’d all be the best of friends, with everyone knowing everything about everyone else. They were Crew. My Crew, a single unit, always and forever, and the thought that they’d be near strangers to each other just didn’t make any sense.

As the meal was winding down, Temeri said, “As pleasant as this has been, we still have a few hours on duty today. Once we clean up here, I’d like to talk to each of you privately in my cabin, starting with Healer Tell.” She hesitated, then said, “Is that all right, Star?”

“Yes?” I said, a little confused by the question. I’d already promised not to pay attention in her cabin. “Of course it is! I promise not to listen unless you call for me!”

“That’s… Star, please don’t look or listen in my cabin at all, even to see if I want your attention.”

“Oh. But what if you need me?”

“Then I’ll yell loud enough to be heard through the door. I want my cabin to be absolutely private. Preferably, I would like all the crew cabins to be private. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, Captain.” I didn’t like that at all, but I didn’t want to argue. Temeri was the captain, and she wouldn’t have been promoted and given command over the Crew if she didn’t know what she was doing. And the way that she relaxed slightly when I agreed was nice, so I couldn’t be too upset about it anyway.

Once the rec room was clean, they all went back to work. Harvin went back to looking into the void — I asked what he was doing, and he said that he’d spend some time trying to get a message back to Command. Simeon went with Temeri, like she’d asked, and Bekeri and Varlanda went to the crystal chamber to prepare the first matrix crystal for Varlanda to work on. It was a fiddly process, which involved them first having me fix the housing to the floor with Hull, so all the connections could be made. Then they had to install the blank crystal, and finally Bekeri infused it with mana from a mana crystal. I could already feel it at that point, only where a normal Matrix had all these possibilities in it and things that told me that it was working properly, the blank crystal was just… blank.

While they worked, Simeon came to send his sister to the captain’s cabin. When she was done she did the same for Bekeri, and he in turn sent Harvin in. But it was only for a short while each, so it barely slowed them down. They were done by the time the day ended at 2100 hours.

“So, you’re sure that you’re okay with starting with the Mana Condensation Matrix?” Varlanda asked me as they closed the housing.

“Yeah,” I told them. I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for it. “We’ll start with that one.”

“And you’ve sent the schematics to my slate?”

“Yep.”

“You’re sure that it’s the right ones? This is all new to me. I probably wouldn’t even be able to tell.”

“I doubt she’d make such a simple mistake, Varlanda,” Bekeri said, his ears twitching with amusement.

“No, I’m sure,” I agreed. It’s not like I could possibly mix the different schematics up.

“Even if you’d rather do the Development Matrix first instead?” Varlanda asked innocently. “There’s no way you could have gotten distracted and accidentally sent me the wrong schematics? Like I said, I wouldn’t even be able to tell.”

It occurred to me then that, if I wanted to be really sneaky, I could have slipped her the schematics for the Development Matrix instead. I could have blamed… something. Being busy looking for more ships, maybe? Something like that. But that would be lying. I couldn’t lie to the Crew, could I?

I made sure that I’d sent the right schematics, just in case I’d accidentally and by mistake sent her the ones I’d rather she work on. But, no. She had the ones she wanted.

“Definitely sure,” I told her. “You’re good to go!”

“See, I told you,” Bekeri said with great satisfaction. “Star wouldn’t mess up like that.”

“That’s great,” Varlanda said. “It’s good to know that I have the right schematics already. I won’t even need to check them in the morning. It’s not like anyone could change them while I slept or anything. Nope, I’ll just get right to work after breakfast.”

“Thank you, Varlanda!” I said. “That way you’ll get done sooner, and we can get to work on the Development Matrix!”

She laughed softly. “That’s right, Star.”

I was so lucky to have Varlanda for my Crystal Enchantress. I really was.

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I've attached a side and top view of the Best Ship In The System. This is a third version, after some very helpful feedback in the #side-projects Discord channel. It's still approximate, likely lacking, and subject to sudden revision, but I hope it doesn't contradict anything in the text.