23 - Base of Operations

Maya groaned and opened her eyes. She immediately shut them. The world spun for a moment, turning the overhead lights into a kaleidoscope of color and nausea.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a voice said.

Maya opened her eyes slowly; she saw Nan looking over her. Nan wasn’t in her usual demonic form, she was in her human form. The blue eyed woman smiled at her, revealing sharp teeth that was… comforting.

“How long was I out?” Maya asked.

“Three days.”

“Three days!” Maya jerked herself up to a sitting position. “Holy shit, is everything all right?”

“Of course,” human Nan said. She looked at her quizzically. “Should something be wrong?”

“No, it’s just… I don’t know, shit happens all the time around here.”

“Well, no… shit has occurred since you decided to apply your attribute points.”

“Cool. Okay…” Maya rubbed her face. She needed a shower and a giant pile of ration bars. “What’s with the get up?” Maya asked, gesturing to Nan’s human form.

“Experimentation,” Nan replied. “I just wanted to see how you would react to seeing a human face.”

“How did I react?”

Nan gave a shrug. “Normally.”

“Is that good?”

“Unsure.”

“Cool.” Maya got up and felt unsteady for a moment. “I don’t feel any different.”

“The application of such a large amount of attribute points takes time to fully integrate into your body. You’ll be feeling more and more… different as time goes on.”

“What was that three days of being knocked out for then?” Maya demanded, shaking her head.

“You jumped nearly forty levels in less than an hour. Your body needs to adapt to it, not to mention you had barely slept in the previous five standard days.”

“Right, right,” Maya said and yawned. “Where’s everyone?”

“They’re on the Hanganathorie, Bell is still experimenting with the algae and Yosi is being proactive in securing future sources of income.”

‘What does that mean? What’s Yosi up to?”

“She’s looting the Officers’ quarters.”

“Aw, man. That’s the fun part.” Maya said, getting to her feet. “Where’s Roci?”

“Roci has decided to only say ‘shovel’ lately, I believe in an act of rebellion,” Nan said. “They are with Bell.”

***

“Smells good, keep up the good work,” Maya announced as she entered the mess hall. The sweet smell of Junior and his new growing family of clones filled the air. Bell was sitting at a table, a lamp lit while he worked on a tablet. Yosi was in the mess hall too, sorting a pile of what looked like jewelry. She didn’t look happy, but glared at Roci who sat across from her.

“Nanaseto said you were awake,” Bell said, glancing up from his work.

“And no one threw me a surprise party? No welcome to mid-grade level 51 yeehaw party?”

“I also achieved mid-grade,” Yosi said, not looking up from what she was doing.

“Shovel!” Roci yelled.

“You, young AI. Are you not supposed to be grounded?” Maya demanded. Roci shrank back. “What’s with the glum look, Yosi?”

“Roci cheats,” Yosi stated.

“Shovel!” Roci said to Yosi.

Maya walked to the two and saw that they were playing a game. The jewelry that Maya had seen were small glass discs that attached to silver chains. As Yosi moved a disc, it caused the silver chain to rise and solidify, when Roci moved a disc, it either caused their own disc to rise or Yosi’s to fall. It looked like magical checkers and from what Maya saw, Yosi was losing badly.

“Nan tells me you’ve been looting,” Maya said, crouching down before the two. She watched as Yosi hesitantly placed a glittering disc and it immediately collapsed. Roci chuckle as Yosi hissed.

“I have been,” Yosi said, “but I’ve encountered too many traps. Although most that I have come across are non-functioning, scans and a few experiments have shown that more than a third are still active.”

“Oh, damn. Are you alright?”

“I was not injured too badly, just a singe from a corrupted blaster that exploded.”

“Ah, the ole corrupted charge cylinder trick. Bell knows all about that.” Maya grinned. “Find anything good?”

“Bell has been cataloging what was recovered. A decent amount of high-grade items, a few mid-grade, and an abundance of low-grade.” Yosi said, rising to her feet. She pulled out a tablet and sent the information to Maya’s computer.

A window appeared before Maya that allowed her to scroll through the items they had collected. It was a pretty decent list.

“We broke down the crew into four categories. The Officers, the Fighters, the Crafters, and the System Tech Users.” As Yosi spoke a list of names appeared before her, sorted into four columns. “I had Veskari open up the computer systems before he left and I managed to access a full roster of the crew along with their hiring information. I’ve also correlated the data into where their quarters were located on the ship and their work areas.”

“This ship had Crafters?” Maya asked, looking at the list.

“About a tenth of the crew were Crafters of some sort, mainly armor and weapon repair, but also a few [Enchanters] and a [Spell Scribe].”

“That’s a new one to me.”

“[Spell Scribes] produce single use scrolls, cards, images, depending on their focus. Anyone can use them,” Yosi brought up a map of the ship and Maya saw that it was color coded by rooms and areas.

Yellow marked the Officers, less than two dozen of them.

Red marked the combat orientated class, which was about a quarter of the crew. These, Maya discovered were supervisors of the various departments and labs on the ship.

Green marked the system tech users, the [Engineers]. [Technicians]. [Lab Assistants], and the various other occupational abilities that made up more than half of the crew.

White marked the Crafters, two dozen SIL who had workshops and areas dedicated to them to create enchanted items. From a purely square meterage standpoint, the Crafters got far more room than everyone on average.

There was a blue coded area also, Maya paused on that and saw the it was the Class Two areas. Small dens beside the officers quarters.

“This is good work,” Maya said to Yosi. The woman beamed at the praise.

“Although the Hanganathorie was an exploration vessel and was supposed to be unarmed, it is well known that combat orientated SIL carry around a lot of weapons,” Yosi said. “It may sound like a tired cliche, but they are a very paranoid bunch.”

“Awesome. We really need to get back to Earth, it’s been eighteen standard days since we were back. That’s twenty two Earth days, or nearly two whole Earth MVT days. A lot can happen in two days,” Maya said.

“With the third core in Earth orbit, we have less interference from the cores being so close together,” Bell said. “But also with the reduced power, we have been able to only fill one mana battery with 20Mg in the last three days. The core of the Bonita’s Revenge has filled another core about a third of the way, the reduced rate is due to the heavy draw of mana that the Bonita’s Revenge and the Habitat require.”

Maya took a seat at the table Bell was working at, Yosi and Roci joined them, abandoning their game.

“It always comes back down to power. We have three cores now, the the pub core, the BR’s core, and the Hangy’s core. Nan uses the pub core, because we don’t have a strong enough battery to run her own AI core and all the medical equipment she’s tied to, the BR core is needed to ensure that nothing nasty comes our way, and the Hangy core is our recharging core, along with running all the lights and equipment we have on the Hangy itself.

“At least the pub core can be used to recharge the smaller batteries, the weapon batteries and the tool batteries.” Maya drummed her fingers on the table. “We have the Black Goo patent now, so we can begin producing more black goo and finish up the mana net…”

“We need to build up our base,” Bell said.

“Huh?” Maya asked.

“We have been… treading water lately, Maya.” Bell set down his tablet. “We have just obtained a large amount of equipment and knowledge, now we need to use them. This is not something new, we have had this discussion before. After the Roach King attacked us, we barely did the basics of creating defenses in this ship, now we need more.”

Maya frowned. Making defenses was taking time away from making tools and weapons that were needed on Earth. It also meant less time looking for loot, which would mean a lower amount of credits when they finally got back to Peg and his family.

“You’re not wrong there.”

“The Bonita’s Revenge offers a good defense against heavy targets, but we’ve tested it’s reaction time and ability to track and destroy smaller targets, like the roaches or rats that once infested this place. Although it can track them, the targeting system cannot hit them, unless you wish to cause major damage to the Hanganathorie.

“Therefore we will need to supplement the Bonita’s Revenge’s firepower,” Bell explained. “We’ve drawn up some plans and brainstormed some ideas as to what we’ll need to do to create defenses.” With that, Bell sent information to Maya and a new window appeared, showing a rough schematic of a defense turret.

Maya recognized the weapon, it was the trap gun that had tried killing her when she had entered Huvano’s suite. Bell had refurbished it to be attached to a stand, to have a hopper filled with it’s ammo, and powered by a tool mana battery. It would also use one of the processor they had purchased to communicate with the BR’s targeting system, allowing it to track and hit smaller targets.

“That’s pretty cool,” Maya said looking at the design. “Those Engineering knowledge cubes are paying dividends.”

Yosi and Bell had both decided to accept the knowledge cubes she had purchased. She had ten sets of the engineering cubes, six had gone to the astronauts and she had claimed one set. Although engineering wasn’t the main occupational path they had chosen, the System didn’t prevent them from learning it, but they would not level those abilities as fast as they would their main occupational ability.

That was the issue with being higher leveled in an occupational ability. Even though it took more experience to level; the occupational bonuses supplied by the System at every ten levels increased their ability even more. It allowed them to shape and channel mana into their workflow, making them faster, more accurate, and raising the grade of the items created or work done.

Maya knew that she would hit the mana channeling wall sooner or later. As she had no mana channels and there being no way to reform them, she would eventually stop leveling in occupational abilities.

“You’re right,” Maya said continuing to study the turret. “We need to secure this place from eventual attack. I’m to blame for all of this, I’ve been too focused on helping out Earth that I haven’t been thinking much about this place in general. We need to build it up, we need to secure it, and we need to begin manufacturing or refurbishing what we can. Not for Earth, but for our own defense. The Hangy is our home now.

“First thing’s first. We need power. We need to pull out all the emergency mana batteries and get as many as we can back online. We’ve got 100 liters of mana conductive gel and from what I remember, we need about two liters for each emergency battery. We have five that we were able to fix previously, now we just need to get the others back up and running and we can begin building the turrets.”

“But before we even start doing that, we need to set up the auto assemblers and disassembler, and get that Kixx repair droid up and running too.” Maya looked around. “You didn’t set up the Hotarrii Grow Station?”

Yosi and Roci snickered.

“What?” Maya asked.

“He tried.”

Maya looked to Bell, who frowned and looked away.

“The directions are difficult to follow,” he said. “I did not have the engineering knowledge that I do now.”

Maya shrugged. “No biggie. We can do it later. Now, lets go unwrap our toys.”

***

“Cheap ass crap,” Maya muttered as she tossed aside a mana battery. She growled and picked up another, slotting it into a battery tester; it spat out numbers and data regarding the battery’s health and functionality.

Tool Mana Battery - low-grade, Tier 1

10 kilogen capacity

Condition - 40 percent

Charge - 0 percent

Est. Age - 5 yrs 4 months 12 days

Maya tossed the battery into the ‘good’ pile. They had been lucky to find the battery tester among the piles of junk mana batteries they had purchased. Maya already had ideas on how to use it for the bigger batteries. It was a universal battery tester, therefore it should be able to test every battery they had on hand.

That was the only bright side of the junk batteries she had dug through. Junk was the correct word for it, as nearly three quarters of the batteries were broken and the remaining quarter were about to fall apart due to their low condition.

But it wasn’t all a waste, the mana stones were still viable and she could use them in the black goo later on. Plus most of the components within the battery packs were of decent quality and she could use them to rebuild a few of the batteries. The good thing about the black goo was that it didn’t require quality mana stones, it could use trash stones and it would still work collecting mana and storing it.

Maya dusted off her hands and stretched. She had unpacked and assembled the auto assemblers, disassembler, and the repair droid, but batteries were not included. That had sidetracked her into digging through their new stack of mana batteries and discovering how true the word junk was in describing them.

She scooped the undamaged batteries into her Inventory, she would visit Nan later and drop them off to be recharged. She created a separate storage area in her Inventory to hold the damaged batteries, she would drop them off at the black goo factory on her way to see Nan.

Maya turned and walked to the four machines. The auto assemblers reminded Maya of the robotic builders in car manufacturing plants. It was a combination of four multi-jointed arms that could extend up to ten meters and had a variety of tool attachments to put together items. When not in use, it all folded together into a neat little package, easy to move around.

The disassembler was a large box, about four meters wide by four meters long. One would toss in a device and the disassembler would use scores of thin tiny limbs to shred up the item, not damaging it, but working so fast that the item seemed to have been ripped apart. Afterward it would spit out the components and other items that had made up the object. She would have to provide her own trays and liquid storage containers.

The repair droid was the most interesting one. It wasn’t an AI, like Nan or Tender, instead it was simply a program with limited interactive ability. Maya had learned there were robots, droids, and AI, basically the simple low, mid, and high grade tiers that applied to everything in the Integrated Multiverse.

The assembler and disassembler were robots, drones were robots, and droids were the ‘smartest’ of them all.

The best part of all of it was that Maya could connect all the machines to her computer. It would give her updates on what they machines were doing and allowed her video access to see what they were doing or remote fix problems. It could also connect to her Engineering VR set and that was the best of all.

That was the good news, the bad news was that none of the machines came programed with anything relating to what she needed. The droid was almost usable from the box, as it had many onboard scanning and testing equipment, so it could tell her what was wrong with an item, but it needed to be programed on how to fix the problem.

Maya had the same issue with the assembler and disassembler, they could work, but they needed programming. That lead Maya to dig through her entire inventory of items, old and new to find the one thing she had kept for months without really knowing what to do with it.

Redenno Deployable Structure Primary AI Core - mid grade, Tier 1 - damaged

It was Tender’s old AI core, from when he had been the primary AI for the pub. Maya looked at the slightly damaged core and twisted it in her hand. At the time she didn’t know how to fix it, but now she was leveled in Engineering, Technician, and Mechanic. Perhaps she could fix the damage to it.

Maya marched over to the repair droid and handed the core to it. It took several minutes but the droid finished testing, probing, and prodding the core, until it spat out a series of windows that showed all the issues with the core.

It was going to be difficult, but Maya grinned at the prospect. She wanted to see if she could get something out of it.

***

VR, after becoming Tier 2, wasn’t the horrible headache inducing mess that it had been before. Maya knew it was because her mana channels had been seared, which caused some problems with using only your brain and not your body and soul to do things. The System didn’t like SIL using simulations.

Maya walked around in a laboratory, it was a sterile place with white walls and white lights. It was also the default building area that the engineering gear created. She could program in different locations and sights, but this suited her for now.

On a table sat the AI core. Around it floated holographic windows and displays, showing everything about it. In the real world, it was being held by the repair droid. Maya had connected the droid and all the other machines to the engineering gear; for the price she had paid for the VR set, it worked wonderfully, connecting easily to all the external machinery and relaying information in real time.

Bell, Yosi, Roci, and Maya had spent eight hours setting the machinery up. They had collected everything they could to be disassembled for parts and they had scoured the ship for the components needed.

Maya took a deep breath. Just as she was going to touch the AI core, the simulation shuddered for a moment and a figure appeared in the room beside her.

Roci looked up at Maya, large purple eyes glinting in the light.

“What’s up?” Maya asked.

“Shovel,” Roci said.

Maya snorted. “You can talk. This shovel business has gone on long enough.”

Roci sighed and then Maya watched in astonishment as they changed their form. It was similar to how Tender had chosen a male form when he appeared in the VR simulation, now Roci chose their own form.

Maya smirked as she looked down at a teenage girl with dark skin and purple eyes. She had wild curly hair and wore a dark purple ship suit.

“Figure out how you want to look?” Maya asked.

“This.. This body is fine, a bit weird, but fine,” Roci said in a soft voice.

“You look like I did when I was twelve,” Maya said.

“I based this look on your DNA,” Roci said.

“Where did you get my DNA?” Maya asked.

“Nan gave me access to it.”

“Damn it, Nan.”

“Did I do wrong?”

“No, kid. You’re fine. Just Nan’s got no sense of when to keep information to themselves.”

“She is constantly worried about the health of the living beings,” Roci said.

“Really?” Maya paused and sighed. “I need to hang out with her more often. She prefers the medical facilities in the Hab, as they’re better than what is on the Hangy.” Maya shook her head and looked down at the core. “You gonna help?”

“If I can.”

“Sure, lend a hand. You might teach me a thing or two,” Maya said. She picked up the core and began dismantling it. Roci hopped onto the table and sat watching as she worked.

“When I was a kid,” Maya said, “I used to follow my Pops everywhere. He used to like helping people in our neighborhood, the older folks, those that couldn’t afford to get something fixed professionally. He always said “help those in need and when you’re in need, they’ll help you”. I didn’t really understand it back then, but maybe they helped one another when Integration happened. I can only hope.”

***

“Hello?” a voice asked.

“Hello,” Roci said to the voice.

The core before Maya and Roci glowed. Maya rechecked the readout and grinned.

Refurbished AI Core - mid grade, Tier 1

A blinking cursor appeared.

Please, name.

“Hello, core. What do you want to be called?” Maya asked.

“I do not know what my function is yet. I am running on a baseline operating program, once you have decided what my function is, you can supply a name.”

“You will be a manufacturing AI,” Maya said. “You will repair, disassemble, and assemble machinery and parts, along with working with me to build more machinery to defend our home.”

“That is good to hear,” the voice said. “I have no access to any programs. When will they be installed?”

Maya gave a look to Roci. “Uh… yeah, about that. We don’t have any programs, but y’know, I’m a solid teacher. Right, Roci?”

Roci shrugged.

“Teacher? What does that mean.”

“I’m gonna teach you how to build and fix things,” Maya said.

“That is… abnormal.”

“Hey, that’s just how we roll, Scotty. Your name is Scotty, by the way.”

“Acceptable.”

“Alright, let’s get to work.”

[AI Mechanic]

AIs need to be fixed and you’re the one to fix them.

+ 1 Mental Dexterity