Starmind Chapter 20 (Patreon)

The gunship, my Gunship-Me, was big. Bigger than my original ship body was, or how big New Me had been before I took it apart. Like New Me, it wasn't as wide as my regular body but was instead a long, sleek thing — Temeri had said that it was to present as small a silhouette as possible while attacking. So when the gunship hit the field of Hull pieces I’d left behind, it had actually missed most of them. Not that it mattered.

The bridge was entirely gutted. I’d seen that much at a glance before removing my awareness from it entirely. Even a few small pieces of Hull, impacting at the velocity they did, was more than enough. Sure, the hull had been thick, and there were layers of ablative composite armor and a fairly powerful repulsive static field generator to protect the ship from space dust and micro meteorites. But against pieces of perfectly cohesive metal weighing a few pounds each and hitting at several miles per second…

It was hard to tell how many people had been on the bridge. I might be able to guess based on the volume and mass of the… the organic remains. But I just couldn’t. Not yet. I sealed it off and stopped looking.

There weren't a lot of hull breaches, but there didn't need to be. The handful of chunks that hit had killed the ship with brutal effectiveness. Some of them had disintegrated after impact, causing the situation on the bridge. Others had barely even broken apart, continuing through the ship causing havoc and, in one case, penetrating all the way through and coming out the other end through one of the secondary thrusters.

Damage control systems had kicked in. Bulkheads had tried to divide the ship into sealed sections, and pressurized metal foam between the layers of armor and hull — a brilliant idea that I was definitely going to steal — had flowed out to seal the breaches. It had all failed. The damage was too great; the breaches too large for the foam to set before being carried off by the escaping air.

The ship had died, along with six to nine crew. Again: it was hard to say. I found two intact bodies, and one that was whole enough to identify as a single person. The rest… I’d have to work up the courage to figure it out soon. How many of them there had been, if not who. I owed them that much for what I’d done.

But, horrors of high-velocity impacts aside, there was a lot of interesting stuff on board! Simeon had of course been most interested in food, medical supplies, potions, and things like that, and this ship was fairly well stocked! It was also much tidier, cleaner, and generally more orderly than New Me had been. Or it looked like it might have been until I happened to it, but I couldn't blame the gunship’s crew for the state I found it in.

Besides the things Simeon was interested in, there was, of course, a lot of other stuff that would be useful. The crystal chamber was a bit of a mess, but the artifice bay had made it through the death of the ship intact; it was even pressurized. Bekeri would appreciate that.

And then there was the armory. I didn't like it on principle. I considered scrapping everything in there immediately, but there was Temeri’s perspective to consider. Letting her take a look couldn't hurt, right? The only time she might possibly have a use for a weapon would be if something went terribly wrong, and at that point…

The Crew’s safety had to come before my comfort. Within some limits; I still wouldn't arm myself. Just the idea… no. But I wouldn't stop them from defending themselves. I’d close my eyes and cover my ears and turn off my mana detection if I had to, but I’d let Temeri do what she thought was necessary. Then I’d deal with the cleanup, hating every moment but comforting myself with the knowledge that my Crew were safe. That's how I was coping now, after all.

I reported what I found to Simeon. He didn't need to write it down, but he did anyway — with a lot of enthusiasm.

When I’d finished listing the food I’d found he was in a great mood. He even laughed, saying, “This is great, Star! Assuming it's all okay and that we can store it properly, this is food — real food — for three weeks or so. They must have been prepared for a long pursuit. I’ll have to test the potions before I’ll add them to our stocks, but replacing the mana potions I used will be a load off my mind, let me tell you!”

“It's so good to hear you say that! I could start bringing it over for you, if you want? It’s all stowed properly, but I can just break the doors down for materials!”

“I’d love to say yes, but there’s procedure, you know? I know you're not in the chain of command, but I should clear it with the captain first.”

“Oh, of course!” I said, silently cursing my thoughtlessness. Of course he had to clear it with Temeri first! She felt bad already, even without me encouraging the other Crew to do things without her permission.

I could be such a bad ship sometimes!

I vowed to do better.

When Bekeri took his watch, he did so in the artifice bay. The artifice bay on Gunship-Me hadn't fared as well as the galley, but I still told him about the intact tools and spare components I’d found. Not a whole lot but enough to get him excited.

“Why don’t we start bringing them over right now?” Bekeri asked. “Perhaps there's something I could use for this!”

With the precision wand he was holding he gestured to the disassembled mana infusion assembly on his workbench. He'd removed it from one of the least damaged thrusters and had high hopes of fixing it, until he realized that he lacked some spare parts, and the onboard fabricator didn't have the precision required to make them. That meant he’d have to detach each of the damaged thrusters, haul them up to the artificer bay, then take them apart to see if he could cannibalize them for the required parts.

The problem was: thrusters were big. That, and some of the parts were spatially condensed, making them an order of magnitude more massive than they had any right to be. That made moving one a lot of work, even with me reducing the gravity field strength, and getting the one he had in the bay now up there had taken hours.

I could see why he’d want to avoid doing that another several times, but now I had to be the thoughtful, responsible one.

“We should wait for Temeri’s approval,” I said, with as much determination as I could in the face of his perked up ears and expectant smile. “There are procedures for bringing things onboard.”

“Oh, sure, but you’re not even under her command,” Bekeri objected. “You could—”

“No. I’m sorry, Bekeri. I really am. But Temeri is the captain, and we should wait for her to say that it’s okay.”

“But…” Bekeri’s ears drooped, and he sighed. “Very well. I suppose you’re right. And I do have plenty of work to do as it is. I just really want to know what I have to work with, you know?”

“I know. But I really don’t want to step on Temeri’s authority too much.”

Bekeri was quiet for a moment then said, “Is the captain okay, Star?”

“Okay?” I asked, not sure how much to tell him. “she’s… why do you ask?”

“You talk to all of us a lot, don’t you? Including her?”

“Of course I do! I love talking to all of you!”

“Yeah, well… she’s been very quiet lately, especially since you, you know, went away for a while. I wanted to check on her, but Varlanda was so absolutely furious that I… I mean, Captain Carlon’s the captain, right? But Varlanda is becoming a friend, you know?”

“Well, yes. But what does that have to do with it?”

“I didn’t want Varlanda to get mad at me,” he said, pulling on the long tufts of fur under his chin.

“Why would she get mad at you for talking to the captain?” I really didn't see the connection. I knew that Varlanda had been very angry with Temeri, and I understood why, even if I didn't agree or like it. But why would Varlanda get mad at someone for talking to someone else? It made no sense!

“Because… Star, don't you have any memories from any of us that would fit here? Where someone did something bad to one of us?”

“Not really? I have mostly happy memories — and a few sad ones — but I’m not sure I have any angry ones.”

“Oh!” Bekeri’s ears perked back up. “That's nice! And it explains some things, too. But, to answer your question: when you went silent, Varlanda took it poorly. Very poorly. We all like you, Star—”

“I like you too!”

“I know you do. But to Varlanda, you're important. Do you understand the difference? I don't quite know why, but she doesn't just like you; she cares for you. She feels responsible for you. And when you went silent, there was a feeling that perhaps the captain had tricked you into hurting yourself, and Varlanda… she told Captain Carlon how she felt about that and about how the captain’s been treating you so far. Right in front of the rest of us.”

“Oh. That must have made Temeri feel bad.”

“Yeah,” Bekeri agreed. “But, the thing is, Star… she deserved to feel bad. I know that you want to share the responsibility, but we both know that you would never come up with a plan that was likely to kill people. And Varlanda isn’t the kind of person to use force unless she absolutely has to. The only way she had of punishing Captain Carlon was to make sure that she kept feeling bad about what she’d done.”

“Oh,” I said. It was hard to think of anything else to say. I knew that Varlanda cared about me; of course I did! And I knew why: if I had anything like a mother, she was it. I understood her being protective of me. I just really didn’t like the idea that she’d want someone else to hurt for my sake.

“So that’s why Varlanda would have been mad at me for talking to the captain,” Bekeri finished. “Because she wouldn’t want her to feel less bad about hurting you.”

“I should talk to Varlanda,” I said sadly, not sure if I’d be able to. Not about this. Then I’d just run the risk of making her feel guilty about the whole thing, and… ugh. No.

“So is the captain really okay?” Bekeri asked.

“She’s very worried,” I admitted. “About you, about me, about everything. She worries, and she wants to find a way to keep everyone safe. She and I have a lot in common there. But for how she feels, you really need to talk to her. No matter how Varlanda feels about it.”

Bekeri sighed, his ears flattening as he fiddled with his wand. “Yeah. I should do that.”

By the time Varlanda took her watch, Bekeri had managed to repair one of the many components he was intending to replace, using parts of various artefacts we’d salvaged from New Me. I was very impressed, but I wasn’t sure it had been necessary, really. He’d become very quiet after our conversation, and I got the feeling that he’d just wanted something to focus on.

Varlanda was in a great mood. When I woke her at 0350 hours, with a gust of cool air and a chime, she rolled out of bed with an energetic stretch and a chipper, “Good morning, Star! Thanks for the wake-up!”

My mood, which had been a bit low after talking to Bekeri, rose with her. “Good morning, Varlanda! You’re a lot less grumpy than usual!”

“Am I?” she laughed. “Well, I’m feeling good and rested, somehow. How long’s it been?”

“Six hours, just about.”

She got dressed with practiced efficiency. “Huh. Can’t be that then. But I did— oh, where’s my slate?”

“At the foot of your bed, where you left it.”

“Right, thanks.” She grabbed her slate then took some quick notes. “So, I had a very realistic dream, practically lucid, and it gave me some ideas about how to finish the Manufacturing Matrix more quickly. Time?”

“0357 hours!”

“Great, just in time to relieve Bekeri.”

Bekeri returned to his own cabin after giving Varlanda a short, tired report: “Good morning. Not a blip on the sensors.” Once he curled up on his small, round bed, he was asleep in moments. I felt a little bit bad about how low he’d been; he’d even looked a little nervous when Varlanda swept into the artifice bay to tell him that he was relieved. I really did hope he’d talk to Temeri, though; she really needed to see that the Crew was behind her.

Varlanda, though, was only building her momentum. “So, in my dream, I was in this… this room, I guess, and the schematics for the Manufacturing Matrix were all around me, turning, moving, growing, shrinking… forcing me to look at them in all kinds of new ways. And what I realized was: There are a lot of repeating patterns in the schematic,” she said as she checked her tools around the inactive column that housed the Matrix she was working on. “Which, of course there are, right? There are only so many rune words and glyph forms. But in the schemata you’ve given us, a lot of these patterns overlap through layers! And I don’t just mean they’re in the same sectors, they overlay each other perfectly! So I thought, well, a big part of what I do with my spells is to make sure I don’t penetrate all the way through the layer. Not because that’s a problem, but because you don’t want to affect the layer below, or etch the floor, or whatever. But what if I… don’t? What if I just line up all the layers with a given pattern and just let the etching beam or the mana infusion penetrate all the way to the last one? Sure, I’ll still have to do the deposition on each layer individually, but I can save hours. Hours, Star! I could be done before lunch instead of by late evening!”

“That’s wonderful, Varlanda! Bekeri’s been looking forward to that so much! Oh, I can’t wait to see what we can do with it!”

“Right?” she said and settled in. She didn’t even have the sensors on her slate; she knew I’d let her know if anything happened. “So, all I need now is a mana crystal, and I can get started.”

“Oh.”

My impulse was to just give one to her, but I hesitated. I was using most of my mana for the Development Matrix now, so I hadn’t been making any new mana crystals myself. I’d made quite a few before activating the Development Matrix, and the Mana Condensation Matrix was depositing one into storage every five and a half hours, so we had some available. But that was the thing: some. Any of the casters could use them, and they were our best way of staying ahead of any Bad Guys who may come looking for us. And we needed thirty of the things for a Mana battery. With that in mind, I thought I should really leave the decision to Temeri. I was about to tell Varlanda that when I remembered my conversation with Bekeri.

What if Varlanda got mad at me? I’d been worried about talking to her about Temeri. Telling her that she should wait to see what Temeri had to say before I let her act on her great idea that she was so excited about? I…

It was ridiculous. I knew that it was ridiculous. Temeri was the captain, and it was objectively correct to let her decide how we should use a limited and important resource. But I understood Bekeri much better now. I didn’t want to hurt Temeri’s feelings, but just the idea of the possibility of making Varlanda mad at me, for any reason, made me want to just hide away in the nothing again for a while.

I gave her the mana crystal without a word, teleporting it to the worktable she had fixed to the Matrix housing.

“Thanks sweetie!” she said, smiling hugely toward my Core, and I felt a little better about going behind Temeri’s back. “Let me know if anything turns up on the sensors, alright? Oh, and when it’s time for breakfast! And be loud, please. I’ve got a feeling that I’ll be deep inside my own head until then.”

“Of course, Varlanda.”

“You’re the best, Star!”

When Varlanda said it, I could almost believe it.