Starmind Chapter 13 (Patreon)

There were a lot of preparations to make when someone was going to be shooting at you! Luckily Temeri knew all kinds of things about that, because she’d been shot at in a ship before.

Her first idea was to use the rotational thrusters carefully so we could turn New Me toward the incoming Bad Guys. Temeri called them a “bogey,” but I didn’t like that word, so I just called them “Bad Guys” instead. I could then use a lot of material from inside of New Me to make that body’s hull thicker. It didn’t even need to be proper Hull, since all it needed to do was stop sustained heat beams and “phase-cycling mana pulses”, which were apparently what the weapons on New Me used to destroy things. Then I’d convert as much of the rest as I reasonably could into reaction mass, and after that I’d detach us from New Me. But we wouldn’t go anywhere yet. We’d keep New Me between us and the Bad Guys, and as soon as they passed we’d take off, burning as hard as we could and putting New Me between us again.

“But why do we need to leave?” I asked her after she explained everything and as I was carefully rotating us to put as much of me behind New Me as possible. “They’ll be going so fast once they’re here that they won’t be able to stop for hours, and then they’ll have to accelerate to catch up again. Why do we need to go anywhere?”

“Because,” Temeri said, “once they’ve unloaded their mana pulse emitters they’ll rotate to keep their beams on us. We’re not nimble enough to just dance around the… New You, so we’ll need to burn and turn to keep it between us. Can you do that? I know your Navigational Matrix is good, but I’ve got ten years as a pilot before I got my stars, and I know my evasive maneuvers. You’re a bit bigger than anything I’ve piloted in combat, but the principles are the same.”

There was something about that suggestion that flustered me. The thought of letting someone control me like that was strange and a little uncomfortable. But I needed to trust Temeri on things like this, and we both needed to show that we trusted the other right now. “Um, alright,” I said. “If you think that’s best. Only, you’ve never piloted me before. Since I awakened, I mean. I’m a little worried about what it’ll be like.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I just assumed… I mean, you are a ship.” Temeri said awkwardly.

“Yeah, no, I know. And I know from my archive that you’ve piloted me before I was me. I just feel strange about letting someone control me like that. It’s like… I can feel my thrusters, you know? And they do what I tell them to. I think it would feel strange for them to suddenly do things without my say-so. Like if your legs suddenly started moving on their own. But if you think it’s best, that’s what we’ll do.”

“I promise to only do what I have to, okay? And then you can fly us right back to finish grabbing what you want, and then we can leave again before the bogey gets another good shot at us.”

“Okay.” I tried to sound confident.

“But I would like to stay in the pilot’s seat until we’re truly clear of them. If they’re not satisfied and come after us, we may need some fancy flying.”

“Okay,” I said again, a little less confidently this time.

“How long do we have?”

“About an hour before they intercept. But can't they start shooting before then?”

“Not by much,” Temeri said confidently. “My guess is they'll open fire at a hundred miles or so. Closer if they’re not confident in their accuracy. They're traveling at what, fifty miles per second relative to us? So they’ll want to fire a burst, then rotate and fire another burst to try to get behind our cover. They’ll intercept after two seconds, and then they’ll have another two seconds to keep their beams on us before their accuracy will be too low to be worth it. We’ll need to start burning hard, as hard as you can, when they're too close to change their aim, so about three seconds before they open fire, when they're five seconds out.” She paused, then said, “Star, I'm going to do my damndest to minimize our exposure, but you're not a fighter. We will take some hits, at least from the beams. I don't know what that will be like for you, but I need you to be ready for it, okay?”

“Okay!” I said, not confident at all anymore. “Temeri, I don't like this!”

“I’m sorry, but I really think it's best that I do the piloting. We can do some tests and training later, but—”

“Not that! Okay, I still don't like the idea, but I believe you. I don't like this. All of this! Why do they want to hurt us, Temeri? Why won't they even talk? I don't understand!”

Temeri sighed. “Same as the last group. They want what we have: you, our supplies, and anything else. Only now they've seen that boarding’s failed once, so instead they’ll just hull us. Then they’ll let our atmosphere vent, hope the reactor or main drive don't blow, and try to salvage you.”

I gave up on trying to make Temeri understand. I couldn’t explain to her properly that what I was asking was why they’d want to hurt anyone at all. They’d explained about the probable lack of resources out here and the kind of unscrupulous people that tended to end up so far from Mundus, but it was all very… I was pretty sure that the word was “academic,” to me. I just couldn’t accept that they wanted to hurt us or each other at all, instead of trying to work things out together.

But it was real, and we had to deal with their craziness.

“The rotation’s done,” I told Temeri not much later. “I’ll start thickening the hull now. Um… can we bring everyone to the bridge, when it’s, you know, time? I could make the floor plate thicker, to make sure that you’re all safe.”

“I honestly forgot that you can do that,” Temeri said. “On the fly structural reinforcement. Gods beyond, what a thing. I was planning to call everyone onto the bridge already, but yes, please do. Can you reinforce the engineering section as well?”

I thought about it then said, “I can add more Hull between the thrusters, but I can’t move them or anything. And I can’t get in the way of their exhaust plumes, or there will be all kinds of strange things that I don’t quite understand, but they’ll reduce our thrust.”

“Alright. And the extra plating, that will be just that, right? Extra? It’ll add to our mass?”

“I don’t want to make any parts of me weaker…” I said uncertainly.

Temeri seemed pleased. “That’s fine, Star. The extra protection will be worth the mass. You can convert it to reaction mass, right?”

“Yes?”

“So we can just burn it off, so to speak. You can get rid of the extra mass by using it to replace what we go through maneuvering.”

“You want me to cannibalize myself for fuel?”

“I mean, not if you don’t want to,” Temeri said quickly. “It’s an idea, but if you’re not comfortable, the extra plating would still be useful if they chase us. Just… if we don't have it, we may not need it.” Then she paused before saying, “Besides, didn't you call it Emergency Reaction Mass Conversion? I’d think that turning extra mass into fuel is exactly what it's for.”

I sighed. It took a moment to figure out how to make the right sound telepathically, but I really wanted to express the right feeling, and sighing was what the Crew usually did when they accepted that someone else was right and they needed to do something they didn't want to. “Fine, yes, you're right,” I said, and Temeri relaxed a little. “That's probably exactly why. But I don't like it. Can we wait until we know that we need it?”

“Of course,” Temeri said. “It's your… body, I guess? I can't make you do anything.”

“No, but I can't very well not do it now,” I complained, as I started stripping even more material from New Me to add a foot of thickness to my bottom plate between the thrusters. I did the same to the structural layer between the Crew level and the bridge. “I know it’s what I should do, so I have to do it. I’d be a bad ship if I didn’t.”

“And that’s important to you?” Temeri asked casually as she settled into the pilot’s seat and started adjusting it for comfort. “Not being a ‘bad ship’?”

“Of course it is!” I was baffled by the question, but she did have some strange and hurtful ideas about me. “I’ve told you, haven’t I? I want you all to be safe, comfortable, and happy.”

“Because you want to be a ‘good ship’?”

“What? No! Because I want you to be all those things, of course!”

“So… it makes you happy when we’re happy, and that’s it?”

“And safe and comfortable, yes,” I said, relieved that she seemed to get it.

“Right. And the most important of those is, obviously…?”

“Safety,” I said. Because she was right: it was so obvious that I could finish the sentence for her. “How can you be comfortable and happy if you’re not safe?”

“Right. Yeah. Glad that we agree,” she said then quickly continued, “By the way, how long until contact?”

“Unless they change their velocity, they’ll be at one hundred miles in eighteen minutes, forty-two seconds.”

“And when will you have finished the additional armor?”

That was harder to say. Doing different bits took more or less time, depending on where I could take material from and what was already there.

I just had to make a best guess. “The thicker hull will be done… sooner than that,” I told her. “In ten minutes at most?”

“Okay. Good. Please tell Artificer Bekeri to stand by in the engineering section, ready to boost the drive on my order and then hurry up here. Ask Healer Tell if he has the emergency supplies gathered, and help him bring them up here if you can. And ask Enchantress Tell to finish whichever section she’s working on and then come up. I’d like everyone here and in their acceleration couches well before contact.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” I said. There was something so satisfying about knowing exactly what one of the Crew needed me to do! “And Harvin?”

Temeri looked at Harvin, who sat at his console with his eyes closed. I’d only been talking to Temeri, but Harvin hadn’t reacted to anything she’d said so far. “If he’s that deep under, it’s better if we don’t disturb him. Can you adjust his couch when the time comes?”

“Of course! I can control anything that’s part of me, however I want!”

“Great,” Temeri said, snapping the t. “That’s about it, then. I’m going to make myself useful, plotting some thrust schedules; but otherwise, all we can do is wait.”

I worked on the Hull for as long as I could, stripping away material all over the side of New Me facing us. Some of the things I couldn’t move but wanted to break down for materials ended up in little bubbles of Hull just hanging in space, attached to the main body by simple latticework beams. It was a lot of fiddly work, and I felt pretty good about myself when I’d done all I could for the time being. Then I steeled myself, and before I could lose my nerve I cut the last connections between me and New Me. Instantly it all just disappeared from my consciousness. I could still see it there, only feet away, on any sensor I cared to turn its way, but I couldn’t feel it. It was… less awful than I’d expected, but still nothing I wanted to do too often.

When the Bad Guys were about ten thousand miles away, everyone except Bekeri was safely on the bridge, their acceleration couches turned so that their backs were toward the floor. “I’m going to push the thrusters as hard as Bekeri can get them working,” Temeri warned the others. “And while Star can cancel out some of the thrust, you’re still going to be feeling some hard G’s. I know that none of this is what you expected when you signed up, but remember your training! Focused breathing, controlled tension! Star, how long until contact?”

“Three minutes, fifteen seconds until the one hundred mile mark, Captain!”

“At one minute, thirty seconds, tell Artificer Bekeri to cast his spells and haul ass up here. I want him in his couch with thirty seconds to spare!”

The acceleration couches and the consoles were all connected, and the consoles rotated with the couches. That way people could theoretically use the consoles while accelerating, but only Temeri seemed interested in that, and she had her special flight controls, anyway. Harvin had woken up when Varlanda and Simeon arrived, and the three were talking in low, nervous voices. Nothing important; things about G-force simulators and times they’d been under high acceleration, mostly.

They didn’t talk about the Bad Guys; there was no reason to, I guessed. At the speed they were moving relative to each other, they’d never meet each other anyway.

I’d warned Bekeri about the Captain’s orders. He was waiting in the engineering section, next to the main drive, and he had two mana crystals that I’d given him. I’d asked him about how he could affect all the thrusters by casting a spell on the main drive, and he told me that it was “abstract and conceptual more than anything.” I didn’t really understand what he meant, but when I gave him his mark at one minute, thirty seconds to contact he started casting. He drained the crystals in seconds, and I could feel the effect in all the thrusters. Even the rotational ones!

At one minute to contact Bekeri was done and running for the access tube. I warned him and cancelled the gravity completely, causing him to shoot up the tube so fast that I had to turn the gravity up a little as he reached the bridge just to keep him from hitting the ceiling!

As Bekeri was getting into his couch, I added some extra safety, drawing on my reserves to close off the access tube in both directions on the crew level.

“Thirty seconds!” I announced as Bekeri’s couch rotated to horizontal. Silence fell over the bridge.

“Fifteen seconds!” I was full of nervous energy and itched to do something, but I didn’t know what! I’d done what I could. Now all that was left was to wait, and I hated it!

“Ten seconds! Nine, eight…”

As I counted down Varlanda murmured, “‘s alright, Star. Gonna be alright. You’ll see.”

“Thanks Varlanda — Five, Temeri!”

Temeri started burning, slowly at first, and then pushing it in a way calculated to keep New Me between us and the Bad Guys as they went past. Feeling my thrusters activate without my say-so, feeling myself move and rotate without doing it myself, was uncomfortable and disorienting. I hoped that we wouldn't need to do this too often. Or ever again, really.

Seconds later I forgot all about that.

The Bad Guys opened fire on “two,” earlier than Temeri had predicted. At two hundred miles out, they lit up brightly to my visual and mana senses. For two seconds beams of focused heat played over New Me, kicking up plumes of gas as the metal of its hull boiled. I’d expanded it a little to cover me better, but some of the beams still got past. They scored deep, narrow gouges in my Hull, and the visual sensor I’d used to keep an eye on the Bad Guys vanished in a puff of gas and a scatter of pieces, blinding me partially. Having pieces of me missing was bad, but feeling it happen was far worse. It all hurt terribly, and it was good that I’d transferred all navigational control to Temeri or I might have tried to take control from her, just burning in a straight line to try and get out of the way.

As it was, all I could do was to whine to myself in fear and pain — silently. The Crew were scared enough; they didn’t need me to make it worse. Especially considering that Temeri had just turned up the thrusters as hard as they could go, and even with me doing my best to counteract the G’s with my gravity field, they were being pressed into their couches at over eight standard gravities.

When the Bad Guys passed us a fraction of a second before minus two, the phase-cycling mana pulses hit. I couldn’t tell what they did to New Me other than pieces of metal scattering with the dissipating mana, but I learned better as they peppered first the exposed pieces of my Hull and then my bottom.

Phase-cycling mana pulses, it turned out, did two things. Perhaps I should have already known that. I could have read about it in the archives if the whole concept of weapons didn’t make me queasy. They phase-cycled, meaning that sometimes they were in our reality, and sometimes not, so they could go right through several inches of matter. And they exploded, which happened when they were in the same place as matter when they were in our reality.

The mana pulses that hit me from the direction the Bad Guys had been coming from clipped some sections around my edges. They passed right through my Hull, unless they hit at the wrong angle, and then they blew up inside the gubbins, breaking things that only Bekeri knew what they did. I felt the pain, but I didn’t feel any different afterward, so hopefully I hadn’t lost anything important.

The Bad Guys had kept firing as they rotated, and some of those shots slipped past New Me and hit my bottom. They mostly exploded inside the newly thickened Hull there, never getting deeper than three or four inches. Fragments of metal still shot into the void, but that was better than them flying around the engineering section. Some took out two of the secondary thrusters, getting right into the machinery, and that hurt really bad. I lost another thruster to their heat beams, and then Temeri had put New Me between us again and the Bad Guys were moving away from us at just under fifty miles per second.

I was hurt, and I was in pain, and I was terrified. I wanted to find a way to cry. But everyone was okay — or at least nobody but me was hurt. For the time being my Crew was safe, and nothing was more important.