Starmind Chapter 3 (Patreon)

New Year's Eve. Last night of the year, and it's already passed for some of you when I write this. I wanted to get one last thing published before it's time to celebrate the new year. It's not Draka, but I know that some of you like Starmind. I finished this last night, and rather than sitting on it I figured I'd get it out there. It's pretty raw, but I hope that it'll read well as it is.

Happy New Year, all!

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After the Crew had their meeting on the bridge the mood was… not great. There were two main reasons for this. The first was that they weren't sure where they were, though the big yellow planet with the rings hanging outside was a very helpful clue. The other was that the cargo hold was gone.

When they had tried to use the floating numbers to figure out how much stuff they had, they simply didn’t find anything. The numbers didn't tell them “nothing.” They could see how much they used to have a few days ago, but something was supposed to keep track of their stuff in real time and the relevant numbers simply weren't there. They asked me about it, so I helpfully informed them that I had no idea what they were talking about. As far as I knew, there was no such thing as a cargo hold, and I had no sense of what might be in there even if there had been one. I had a little space with Storage Matrices, for temporary storage of waste before it went through the Transmutation Matrix and became something more useful, and that was it.

That made the Captain send Bekeri down to look at this supposed cargo hold. There was a platform that I knew was a lift, although I didn’t know what the point of it was since it just led outside where there was no air, sweet or otherwise. The lift refused to work since it agreed with me that there was nothing outside, and that got Bekeri all kinds of worked up. Beside the lift was a hatch. He reached out to turn the handle, but hesitated.

“Star,” he said. “What’s on the other side of this hatch?”

“A lot of space and no air!” I said helpfully.

“Is the cargo hold depressurised,” he asked, sounding concerned. “Is there hull damage?”

That was a silly question, I thought. “No, there is no damage,” I told him carefully. Perhaps he was confused after hurting himself? “But there is no hull, either, Bekeri. That hatch leads outside.”

“May the void suck my…” he muttered in a very thin voice that I didn't like the sound of at all. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure!” I stated. I could see it myself! There were a few ragged bits and stumps of hull sticking out from my body out there, as well as a few crates and drums clamped or strapped to it, but…

Oh.

“I think that there may have been a cargo hold,” I speculated helpfully. “But it’s gone now.”

*

The Crew were very grateful for my help, but they weren't happy about my idea that the cargo hold had gone missing. The Captain had Harvin, the Diviner, look outside with magic — that was something a Diviner could do, apparently — and he confirmed what I’d seen.

“Right,” the Captain said once they were absolutely sure that there was no mistake. Her face looked very grim. “No stores. What are our survival prospects? Anyone?”

“Good in the short term,” Bekeri said. “The Scrubbers and Recyclers are working just fine, and it looks like Transmutation is powered, at least.”

“So, food and water?” the Captain asked.

“That depends on Star,” Bekeri said, looking at Varlanda.

I had a quick look inside myself for things having to do with the Transmutation Matrix, and found something useful!

“I can give you clean water and a nutritious sludge!” I announced. I could keep the Crew alive! That was the most helpful anyone could possibly be, right? “As long as you keep providing waste, which shouldn't be a problem,” I added.

There was a chorus of groans from the Crew. Even Captain Temeri looked much less happy than I would have expected.

“Do you not like food?” I asked. “The sludge is supposed to be very healthy, from what my memory tells me.”

“We're very thankful,” the Captain replied, “it’s just… it doesn't taste particularly good, that’s all.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. This is a survival situation, not a vacation. So, that’s air, food and water. What about heat?”

“Can’t see the system at all,” Bekeri said. “But we haven’t frozen yet.”

“I’m taking care of it,” I supplied. “And the air pressure and the… downness. It barely uses any mana at all.”

“Sustenance, atmosphere, heat, gravity… and you’re handling all of it,” the Captain said. “Is that right, Star?”

“That’s right, Captain Temeri!” I said happily. Every part of their survival was in my hands, so to speak. I was helping them in so many ways, and it just felt so good!

“Then we had better make sure that Star is happy and has everything she needs, hadn't we?” she said, looking at each of her Crew members in turn before stopping on Varlanda with a very strange, intense look in her eye.

“Yes, Captain!” Varlanda said, smiling strangely. “Definitely want Star to be happy!”

“So, Star? What do you want? What do you need from us to be happy?”

That was a very considerate question. I thought about making something up, something simple that they could do for me so that they’d feel better about themselves, but I decided that it was better to be honest. “I am very happy as it is,” I told them. “Being able to help you all in so many ways makes me feel very, very good about myself. Is there anything else I can do for any of you?”

The assembled Crew looked at each other silently, and then spoke all at once.

“We need to recover whatever supplies…”

“... really need to get at the crystals, so if you could…

“If you could help me figure out our coordinates, maybe contact…”

“Was Varl telling the truth? Did you bend the hull?”

The last was Bekeri, who seemed both horrified and very interested.

I tried speaking to each of them separately. It felt like something I should be able to do and it worked pretty well, although it was hard and I was sure that I couldn’t actually hold a conversation with each of them at the same time. Speaking was one thing, and listening was a very different one.

“If I had more material I could maybe make some hull around the crates and things?” I suggested to the Captain.

“The crystal chamber has air and all now. Just, please don’t go too close to my Core. It’s, uh… dangerous?” I told Varlanda. I felt bad about lying to her, but if she really needed to go in there I had to tell her something!

“I have no idea how to do that, but if you tell me what to do, I’ll do it!” I told Harvin, the Diviner. Trying to figure out where we were sounded like fun!

“Oh, yes!” I told Bekeri. “There was a big gash in my side and I didn’t have any material to repair it, so instead I just put the edges closer together. That freed up some hull where it would have scrunched up otherwise, so I used that to fill in the missing bits. Clever, huh?”

“Very!” he replied enthusiastically. “I don’t know how you can do that, but it was a very expedient solution. Can you manipulate the hull in any other ways?”

“I have skills called Structural Maintenance and Structural Manipulation,” I told him proudly. “I was just telling the Captain that I think… I’m not sure, you see, but I should be able to put some hull around the remaining supplies where the cargo hold maybe was. But I need more material for that.”

“Right, skills…” Bekeri said, mostly to himself, I thought. “Captain, a word?”

Bekeri and the Captain went off to talk, and Varlanda made her way to the crystal chamber. None of them seemed interested in talking to me, being busy with their own things, which was fine. It just meant I could focus on helping Harvin. I kept an eye on Varlanda though, in case she tried to open the column with my Core.

Harvin stood by the table with the images above it. He’d made the space empty, except for a little figure hanging in the air above the centre. The figure looked like me, I realised!

“Alright!” he said, stretching his hands far above his head so that his shoulders made an odd crunching sound. I wondered if he should talk to Simeon when the Healer woke up. “Let’s see where we are! How are your external sensors?”

“I can see all around me, and very far away,” I told him.

“Alright, so visual sensors seem to be working. Can you detect anything else?”

“It is very hot and cold at the same time, and there is no air.”

“Nothing else? No mana?”

I strained, but no. “I can only feel the mana inside me,” I told him glumly. “Maybe if there was a source close by I could feel it, but… wait.”

There was something! When I quieted my other senses and really focused, I could feel something like little swirls and eddies, the lightest touch of a breeze on my hull. I relayed this to Harvin and he beamed!

“That’s just it! Now, is it stronger in one direction? And can you show me on the illusion board?” He pointed to the little me hanging above the table.

“I’ll try,” I told him in answer to both his questions. I felt carefully, and found that, yes, the ‘wind’ was stronger in some directions than others, but not definitively strongest in any one.

“Alright, so…” I said, and focused on the “illusory board” in front of Harvin. I could kind of feel it, but I wasn’t sure how to use it. My first attempts ended with a bunch of random colours and patterns flashing all over it, which wasn’t useful at all besides being pretty.

“Sorry, Harvin,” I said. “I’m having a little trouble.”

“That’s alright,” he said patiently and cleared the board, putting the little me back in the centre. “How about you try to put a dot in the direction with the strongest mana pressure?”

That went a little better. With some trial and error, and a lot of very kind patience and erasing from Harvin, I managed to put a couple of blotches in the space around the little me to indicate the three directions I felt the mana from most strongly.

“Three, hmm?” he mused, looking intently at my blotches. “And the planet, Avara. Where exactly is that in relation to us?

That was easy! I put a big, yellow blob exactly where it belonged compared to where my front was pointing, together with the pretty, white disc around it.

“And the moons?”

There were three of them that I could see, though I was pretty sure that there were supposed to be a few more. They were probably behind the planet or the disc, or just too far away for me to see. I made the planet smaller and put the ones I could see where they belonged, and at the right size, too. I hadn’t adjusted the size of little me at all, so she was much bigger relative to the planet and the moons than I was in reality, but I allowed myself a little bit of vanity.

“Good, thank you, Star!” Harvin said. “Looks like we have one strong source of mana in the direction of Erebus, the second moon there, and one in the direction of Avara. And the third one, then, must be Mundus!” he said triumphantly. “So we know which way is home, and we know which side of Avara we are on! Now we just need to figure out how to get back.”

I was still focusing on the mana, and something caught my attention. “Harvin,” I said. “This one is moving.” I indicated the blotch that pointed toward Erebus.

Harvin looked up with surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Yep!” I told him. “It’s not very quick. Like a tiny, tiny fraction of a degree every second. But it’s moving for sure.”

“Oh. Oh, um… okay. Okay. That could be very good, or very bad. Can you see anything in that direction?”

“Well… the moon? But I can look harder, see if there’s anything else?”

“Please do that, Star. I’m going to try to…” He trailed off and waved with his hand, which I had no idea what he meant. Then he looked very closely at the little me and the moving blotch, orientated himself carefully in the bridge, and turned and pointed toward a point high on the wall.

“There,” he mumbled. “That direction.”

Then his eyes unfocused and he went silent, so I decided not to bother him. Instead I concentrated very hard on looking in the direction of the little mana current I felt from the direction of the moon. I didn’t know what I was looking for, so I looked for anything new and different.

At first I didn’t see anything. The moon was pretty, though, a bright grey with swirls and spots of darker grey and bright yellow. Then, as I was looking at that, I saw a tiny little speck move into one of the yellow areas. At first I thought it was something on the surface on the moon, but then I realised that I had to focus much, much closer to look at the thing.

Harvin’s eyes opened just as I was about to tell him what I’d found.

“I think that there’s a ship!” I told him, just as he exclaimed, with a haunted look, “There’s a ship!”

“Oh, good!” I said. “We agree!”

Looking closer while Harvin ran off to inform the Captain, I could clearly see that it was a ship now. Not that I could see it in absolute detail, but it was too symmetrical to be natural, and it was moving straight toward us. I felt very excited! There would definitely be more Crew on the other ship, and maybe there was another Starmind on there, like me. I’d love to meet someone like myself, I thought. Maybe we could help each others’ Crew? I added it on the board, and even managed a little arrow to show it moving toward us!

When I checked on my Crew, though, I realised that they were excited in a very different way. They didn’t seem angry or afraid, at least, but there was a lot of anxiety going around, and the captain asked me to call Varlanda to the bridge for another meeting. Her face told me that she was more than a little annoyed when she arrived, and that was fair. I’d been paying just a little bit of attention to her, and she had barely gotten the housing open for the Transmutation Matrix when I told her that the Captain wanted her. Still, she was a good member of the Crew, so she just greeted the others and took her place by the table.

“Sorry to call you all in here again,” the Captain began as soon as they were all there. Which was a strange thing to say. Bekeri had been with the Captain and Harvin had been the one to fetch them, so Varlanda was the only one who’s been called in. “Diviner Alder and Star both agree that there is a ship out there, headed our way. Alder?”

“Not much to say, really,” Harvin said. He pointed to the board. “Star and I have figured out where we are, but as Star has helpfully illustrated we detected a ship out there, in the direction of the moon Erebus. It’s definitely coming our way, and when I attempted to link with someone onboard I got no response. I can’t tell if that’s because they refused the link or because they don’t have anyone capable of linking over this kind of distance, though.”

“What can you tell us about the ship?” the Captain asked.

“Nothing, really. Small crew, that’s all I could make out. Three, maybe four. Star, did you see anything?”

“It is smaller than me,” I told them, “and I think that it is moving pretty quickly! It might be here in twenty hours or so?”

“Right. Alder, I want you to keep trying to contact that ship. If that fails, try to collect as much information on the crew as possible. Bekeri, see if you can repurpose anything as a weapon, ship-to-ship or boarding. Tell, I want a full maintenance report on all of the crystal Matrices…” She hesitated. “Except Star’s Core, of course.”

“Of course, Captain,” Varlanda said. They were so considerate. She sounded tired, though, when she said, “I can tell you right now that the Teleportation Matrix is severely damaged. The whole column’s a mess. I’ll take a look at it, but it looks like it's burned out.”

“Shit,” the captain said, running her hand over her face. Then after a pause she added, “That’s a problem for later. For now we have to get the situation under control.”

“What about me, Captain?” I asked. “What can I do?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d help Bekeri and Tell when they need it. And it would be very good if you could figure out the limits of your skills, especially Structural Repair. Just in case there’s… an accident.”

“Good thinking, Captain,” I said. “I’ll do that!”

Of course, I hadn’t missed Captain Temeri telling Bekeri to see if he could make weapons. I knew what they were for. I wasn’t an idiot. I just couldn’t imagine any reason they should have to use them. Why would anyone all the way out in the void want to go and hurt someone else? It was a ridiculous notion. Still, if it made them feel better, I would certainly do my best to help.

Unfortunately, when Bekeri asked, I didn't have any blueprints that were useful to him. I could make hull, which had some mana channels in it and such, and I could make food and some other things, but otherwise I was quite limited.

Bekeri wasn’t too pleased about that, though he didn’t blame me. When I explained that I could only make some pretty basic materials as well as things that I had blueprints for, he sighed, and asked, “Do you at least have some emergency mana crystals in storage? I might be able to do something with those.”

I looked around and found that I had a whole Storage Matrix devoted to mana crystals! It had a funny name, but it felt just like a Storage Matrix. When I looked inside it, it was empty, but a message came up.

No mana crystals available. Condense mana into crystals?

Oh, I thought. Yes please!

Suddenly all my mana was drained out of me in one go. I checked, and it was literally 0! It was a pretty nasty experience, honestly, going from full to empty like that. But when I looked in the Storage Matrix again I found a single Small Base Mana Crystal inside! And a couple of messages popped up, too!

Mana Condensation learned! Level set to 1.

Mana Crystal obtained! New construction options available: Development Matrix, Mana Condensation Matrix, Matrix Housing.

Well, that was great! I thought about the Mana Condensation skill, and my memory told me that it would let me turn my mana into Small Base Mana Crystals at a rate of one hundred mana to one crystal. That meant that every hundred minutes I could make a crystal, if I didn’t do anything else with my mana. This was quite exciting! I happily told Bekeri, and he was just as excited as I was!

“You can make mana crystals?!” he said, so full of excited energy that he couldn’t be still. He walked around, threw his hands out, jumped in place, all kinds of funny things! “How… no, let’s forget about that, for now. How many can you make?”

“I can make one small crystal every one hundred minutes,” I told him, very pleased at his reaction.

“How small is a ‘small’ crystal?”

“Oh, I’ll show you!” I said and, retrieving the crystal I had made, placed it on a nearby table. Bekeri didn’t see it at first, but when he did he stared.

“Did you just teleport this crystal?” he asked, and carefully picked it up. It was about the length and thickness of his thumb. “This is excellent,” he said looking at it from different angles. “No flaws, extremely clear. Not too big, but big enough…”

He stopped studying the crystal, then looked around himself, like he wasn’t sure where to rest his eyes. “Star,” he said. His voice was very airy and deep. “What are you?”

“I am a Starmind,” I said helpfully. “And I am the ship!”

“But how can you… you speak into our minds. You can modify the hull, and you can make mana crystals and teleport things! How?”

“I don’t know, I just can!”

“What else can you do?”

“I don’t know that either. Sorry! I keep finding out new things, and it’s all very exciting!”

“Yeah,” he said, though it didn’t feel like he was talking to me anymore. “Exciting.” Then he shook his head, which I always thought was just a figure of speech but he really did it.

“Star, I would like you to make as many of these crystals as you can, please. And you can make hull material, right? Can you make it in any shape? Here’s what I have in mind…”

The pieces that Bekeri had in mind were all pretty simple, but I hadn’t tried anything like that before. All I’d made out of Hull was, well… Hull. And then I’d only filled in what was missing. I was pretty sure that I could make new walls and such so that I could enclose the things stuck to my outside, where the cargo hold might have been, but entirely new things? I really wasn’t sure about that, but I had to try.

I started small. Could I make a very thin bit of hull on the floor? Yep, that worked just fine. Could I then make another piece coming off that first piece? I made another thin bit of hull come out of the end of the first, at a right angle. It was easy! Then, just to see if I could, I removed the layer connecting it to the hull. Just a few atoms thick, but that was enough. What was was basically an L profile made out of hull material slowly tipped over and clattered to the floor.

“It worked!” I said happily to Bekeri.

“Excellent! Now, can you try what I described?”

I gave it my all, at the same time as I experimented with how and where I could make things. It seemed like anything that belonged and was connected to me was fair game as a surface, and just to see if I could I made a circular section of hull filled in with a honeycomb of struts come out of the table, then absorbed it right back in. From there, it was just a matter of practice. As long as I could think of the entire structure that I needed, I could make pretty much anything in one go! It couldn’t be very big, and the more complicated it was the longer it took to make, but it worked!

I got to work on Bekeri’s project. I had to try a couple of times to get the thread to match up for the pieces that screwed together, but whenever I messed it up I could just absorb the bad piece and try again. It ate a tiny bit of mana, but not so much that I stopped regenerating. Bekeri got very excited the first few times, since as far as he knew I was not supposed to be able to simply push out a piece of hull and cut it off. And especially not from a table. But he accepted it pretty quickly, being too pleased with what I was producing to worry about how I was doing it.

By the time I’d finished the first set of pieces, my mana had recharged to the point that I could make another Small Base Mana Crystal, so I did, plopping it on the table where I’d put the first one.

Manual Production learned! Level set to 1.

Research and Development learned! Level set to 1.

“Okay, Bekeri,” I said, feeling very capable. “How many do you need?”