Earth

Spectre Base, Canadian Rockies

August 21, 2019

06:33 PDT (09:33 EDT)

“LET’S GO, LADIES. MOVE IT! MOVE IT MOVE IT!,” our taskmaster yelled as he walked beside us.

Remember when I said that I was excited for our training to begin? I take it back. Training fucking sucks.

Well, not all of it sucks, just the stuff that we had to do in the early mornings. Two days earlier, my mom had introduced us to the man who would be overseeing the first few weeks of physical training. He was Tas Dymith, and was one of the few Scyftans who seemed to stay in their natural form the majority of the time. He did switch to his human form a few times to show us some techniques, but otherwise the small Scyftan man ran us ragged.

His job was to get us in proper shape. It wasn’t something that I thought was necessary since our attributes make us faster, tougher and stronger, but apparently that isn’t the case. There had been a number of case studies conducted over the years, taking pairs of people with the exact same stats and putting them through trials. The only difference between the two was that one was fit and the other one was obese. They weighed the exact same, but that’s because muscle is heavier than fat.

The two would have to do various activities over the course of months, testing their Strength, Agility, Endurance and Constitution. The tests included many of the same tests used in dungeon evaluations, but a bunch of them were also quite similar to boot camp training, with obstacle courses and other drills. In every case they found that the fit participant always had the edge over the obese participant. They were stronger, hit harder, were able to take more damage and had noticeably higher stamina. All around, they were superior to their counterpart.

Before the case studies, armed forces across the galaxy didn’t care if you were fit or fat, as long as you were high level and followed orders. When the news came out that a fit man always out-performed one that wasn’t fit, they began changing things, however.

The problem with working out when you have high attributes is that you need to work harder, meaning that every person has to work out a different amount to get the desired result. That set the armed forces off on trying to figure out how much people should train, depending on their attributes. After a few years of testing, they finally came up with a regimen that would get people into shape in the least amount of time. The Spectres used the same regimen, though they tweaked it over the centuries, taking some inspiration from their time on Earth.

Since my friends and I were all over the place in terms of stats, each of us had a regimen tailored to us. While people without many points in Endurance would be fine just running a few kilometers, it wasn’t the same for us. Every morning before breakfast, all five of us had gathered together and ran a literal marathon around a track. Only after we finished the forty kilometer run would we be able to eat breakfast, and even when we were done, we would immediately continue with the regimen.

The marathon wasn’t all that bad for any of us, though Ben did have a bit more difficulty than the rest of us did. Mason and I were both pretty fit from playing football, as were the twins from their love of martial arts. Ben, however, was the geek of the group, and as such, would be found reading or working at his computer rather than working out. Still, he finished the marathon like the rest of us, it just took him a little bit longer. He did get faster with every marathon, and he would probably be able to keep up with us in a week or two.

After eating breakfast, weight training would be next, though it wasn’t the normal weight training as you might expect. There was squatting and bench pressing, though Tas seemed to prefer other forms of exercise to the normal ones. There was one that was much harder than the others, designed to exercise the lower body

“PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT!” he yelled in my ear as I lifted the thousand pound tire and flipped it over. After waiting for it to settle, I bent down and grabbed onto it, repeating the process.

My mom had given him permission to work me hard, and he seemed to enjoy doing that at every opportunity.

Each of us had to bring our tire from the starting line to the marker five hundred meters away and then bring it back, at which point we would be allowed a quick break before continuing on to other things. It wasn’t easy for any of us, as each of us was working with tires of different weights. They were absolutely identical in size and looks, though they definitely weren’t all the same weight.

Ben, being at ten Strength for example, was working with a tire weighing a measly two hundred thirty-six-point-five pounds, while Mason, having two hundred seventy-nine Strength, was working with a tire weighing nearly five and a half times as much. The rest of us fell somewhere in the middle, with the weight we had to lift being determined by a literal mathematical formula, looking something like this:

((Base Strength * 40) + ((Max Strength - Base Strength) * 3)) * 1.1

The one-point-one on the end was what made it a struggle to lift the weight, but without it, working out would be pointless; we wouldn’t gain anything. It was a ten percent modifier which required us to exert ourselves, but without trying to lift so much that we would strain and injure ourselves at the same time.

We alternated what we worked on every day, but as soon as we were done lifting weights or flipping tires, we would be given another five minute break to cool off and grab a drink of water. After that, we continued on to the final part of our morning; the obstacle course.

It wasn’t one of those old obstacle courses that included tires and crawling under barbed wire with a weapon in your hands, but was instead one of the new-age ones that you might see on TV. It was incredibly hard, with rolling logs, warped walls, peg walls, salmon ladders and spider climbs among others. Thankfully, there were no pools of water if we fell, so we could get up and try it again right away.

Of the five of us, Mason made it the furthest but none of us made it more than a fifth of the way through. After three days of trying and not getting any further, all five of us claimed it was impossible. We were proven wrong, however, when Tas completed the entire course in just under ten minutes. In his Scyftan form.

After everything was reset, there was a surprise appearance: my mom. She too, completed the entire course, though she was quite a bit slower and there were a few spots where she almost failed.

My friends and I were amazed to see the least, having never imagined her capable of something like that. She looked over and waved as my friends and I cheered before turning to talk to Tas. After a few minutes of chatting, she walked over and joined us.

“That was awesome!”

“Thanks, Sonja,” she said before looking back at the obstacle course. “I’ve done it before, but the configuration is different than it was then. You could say that I’m rusty.”

“I still say that it’s impossible for people at our level,” Mason said. “None of us can get up the forty-foot warped wall and that’s preventing us from going any further. Both you and Tas ran up the forty-foot like all of us ran up the twenty-foot. It was effortless.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’ve seen people lower level than the five of you get up that warped wall. You’ll get it eventually. Anyways, the reason I came down here is that Tamara and Floyd will be taking you guys to see the wolves earlier today, so you’ve got the afternoon off. Go take a shower and grab some lunch, and then head down to her office when you’re done. Jonathan, Tamara said that you can bring Vixa with you, if you wish.”

“Really? Isn’t there a risk that someone will see her?”

“Not particularly,” she answered. “You’ll be in a pretty remote area and the wolves will know if anyone else is nearby.”

“Cool, she should enjoy that. This will be her first time outside since coming to Earth, right?”

“Yup,” my mom answered before grinning broadly. “I remember the first time I let Imuna go outside on Earth. It was her first time ever visiting a new planet, and she teleported all over the place, sniffing and digging. Keep in mind that this was over a thousand years ago, and the world was much less populated. Even though we were in a pretty unpopulated area, I was worried that someone would be drawn towards us by the noise created whenever she teleported.”

“I tried to pick her up so we could head back to the ship that we were living on at the time, but every time I got close she would teleport away, thinking that we were playing a game. Even teleporting to try to catch her wouldn’t work, as she would teleport away as soon as I appeared. After about ten minutes of trying to catch her, I had to call in Yuki, who snatched her up in seconds. At least you shouldn’t have that issue, what with two of you having Precognition and there being a bunch of wolf pups around.”

“Scyftan foxes live that long?” Anja asked.

My mom nodded, “Nedovis is a rather odd planet in that a lot of animals native to it have longer-than-average life spans. They don’t live nearly as long in the wild, but as pets they can live for about thirty-four to thirty-six hundred years. Imuna could be considered middle aged, a friend gave her to me near the end of 11102 on the Scyftan calendar. That was about fifteen hundred eight years ago, now. Alright, I’ve held you guys up long enough, you’d better get going.”

We waved Tas goodbye and each of us teleported to our respective rooms so we could clean off all the sweat from our workout. After greeting Vixa, I took out my phone to check the time. I noted that it was only 11:23, which meant that it would be a little more than an hour before food would be deposited into her dish. Not knowing what time we would be back, or if there would be anything for her to eat while we were visiting with the wolves, I decided to feed her early. Walking over to the feeder, I pulsed mana at the sensor near the top causing it to dispense her lunch. After verifying that the next feeding time was now 18:30, I headed to the shower.

Once I was clean and dressed, I had Vixa join me and we headed to the cafeteria. None of my friends had beaten me there, so I grabbed some lunch and turned to find a table. Normally the cafeteria is packed at meal times, but I must have just barely beat the rush, allowing me to quickly find a table and save some spots for my friends. Vixa hopped up on the bench beside me, and after tossing her a small piece of chicken, I dug in.

There was very little chatting when my friends did arrive. We were all ravenous and wanted to fill our bellies before heading off to spend some more time with the wolves. Normally it was only Mason and I who got seconds, but this time all five of us got up for another pass through the buffet line. Even Vixa was getting seconds as my friends seemed incapable of not passing her little bits of meat.

When we were finally done, we all got on the elevator and headed down to the floor that housed the gryphon enclosure and her office. The door was open when we arrived and we saw Gurok lying near her desk. He raised his head and opened his eyes, examining us for a moment before closing them as he dropped his head back to the floor. Not wanting to just barge in, I knocked on the door frame.

Looking up, she smiled when she saw who it was. “Ah, come in and take a seat. I’m just finishing up some paperwork and then we can get going.”

We took her up her offer, though none of us wanted to get particularly close to the massive Grizzly bear. While any of us would be perfectly fine against a wild Grizzly, I knew that none of us would stand a chance against Gurok. Vixa wasn’t nearly as scared, however, walking right up to Gurok and sniffing him. He opened his eyes again briefly, but closed them again, going right back to his nap.

We chatted quietly amongst ourselves, making plans for later that evening. After explaining how it worked, the ladies did end up joining us in Battlestate, though they wanted to go in another direction. Rather than pool our money together to buy a bigger and better ship, they wanted one of their own.

Unfortunately there wasn’t anything that stood out at their price range, so Mason, Ben and I decided to give them the majority of the money we’d earned so far. With the one hundred twenty-five thousand we gave them, and the thirty thousand of their own, they purchased two thirty meter Manticore-class frigates. They were about sixty thousand each, which gave them another thirty-five thousand to upgrade them however they wished.

The result was a pair of pretty formidable ships that could easily disable our cargo ship, and wouldn’t have any issues whatsoever against the smaller ships used by the pirates. In fact, the other two cargo ships and their escorts were the ones to flee when we jumped into the system, leaving us the entire asteroid field to ourselves, once again.

With the girls providing protection, things went a lot faster and smoother than it did on our first mining run. That was mostly the result of having an extra ship to find and mark suitable asteroids so all Mason needed to do was fly out and grab it. The girls had ended up finding a large amount of asteroids containing platinum, but Ben was worried about mining too much of it, lowering its value. Even so, the three crates we filled with platinum ore ended up being worth over three hundred thousand credits, all on their own. The other nine crates were filled with a mixture of titanium, tungsten, tantalum and iridium, the latter of which fetching a nice twenty-six hundred credits per ton.

When everything was offloaded, we were just shy of seven hundred thousand credits. That was more than enough credits to trade in our cargo ship and upgrade to something better, which is what we were debating now. We could upgrade as soon as we logged in for a few hours tonight, or we could go do another mining run to earn more credits, the end goal being to save up the ten million credits to purchase a battlecruiser.

There was a very steep increase in price after cruisers, which was probably because battlecruisers were much more capable. They had double the weapon hardpoints, and they were the cheapest of the large ships available that could have mass drivers as the main weapon. They were formidable weapons in the right circumstance, but also cost another two million credits.

The big draw for saving up for a battlecruiser would be that the cargo bay would be big enough to fit up to two one hundred meter frigates. Enemy ships would definitely be in for a surprise if they thought they were only taking on a single ship.

“Yeah, let’s wait, I like that idea,” Ben said. “Assuming future mining runs have a similar yield, that’ll take us another thirteen runs or fourteen runs. More if we need to upgrade our ships a bit between now and then, which is certainly likely if more groups show up. Maybe even wait until we can get twelve million credits and get one of the ones with mass drivers. The nice thing about those is that they’re loaded automatically so we won’t need a crew to load them.”

“We could reduce the amount of runs we would need to make if we go for nothing but platinum, couldn’t we?” Mason asked. “Just go drop off a few crates of platinum at one space station and then move to another one and drop more platinum off there.”

“Won’t work,” Ben answered, shaking his head. “I explored that idea, but the ore prices are based on sectors of space, not individual stations. We would have to go to one of the adjacent sectors and sell our ore there, but that’s a three day trip there, and another three day trip back. It’s just not worth it.”

“That really sucks. How do prices not plummet when there are a large amount of people gathering resources in a sector?” Anja asked.

“Oh, that’s easy. Supply and demand,” Ben answered. “This is an area of space that was recently added to the game so there aren’t many players here spending money. As more players show up, demand will increase and prices will go up. Actually, that gives me an idea. We could rent storage on the planet below and store all of our platinum and other valuable metals there while selling off the rest. Over time, the prices will gradually go up, and we could sell it all off when prices are high. It’s definitely a long-term plan, but we’re probably going to be pretty busy over the next month or so, anyways.”

“You should definitely talk with my sisters about that. I’m sure that they would have some insight,” I said as Vixa hopped up on the couch and climbed into my lap.

“I’ll do that,” he nodded.

“Alright, sorry to keep you guys waiting,” Tamara said as she walked over to us, pausing to place the cube that held her own small, artificial sanctuary on the floor. Pressing the button on top, she stepped back as the portal formed. “Alright, Gurok, off you go.”

He got up and ambled over to the portal, stopping to rub up against Tamara before walking through. She closed it up behind him and then stored it back inside of her storage.

“That reminds me. I talked to Abi about making my Beacon work like your cube but she said that she would need to examine one to see how it works. Do you have one that I can borrow for a few hours?”

“Sure, give me a minute,” replied, walking to the door behind her desk and pulsing her mana at it. When she came back a minute later, she was holding a cube that looked identical to the one she used. “Here you are.”

“Thank you,” I replied, accepting it while I took the Beacon out of my storage.

I put the cube inside of Abi’s storage and then put away the Beacon while letting her know that she could start scanning it.

[Alrighty, I’ve got it,] she replied. [It should only take a few hours and then you can give it back to Tamara.]

[Cool, I’ll let her know. Thanks.]

[No problem, Jonathan.]

“Abi has it now and will scan it over the next few hours. I’ll be able to give it back to you later today.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Tamara’s husband, Floyd, and daughter, Bria, arrived a few minutes later and he opened up a portal to the very same hill that we had arrived on the first time. I made sure to tell Vixa not to go too far from us, and she yipped in reply, running a short distance away to sniff some bushes. Like the last time, Floyd shifted into his wolf form and howled into the air. There was a reply a few minutes later, so we headed down to the clearing in the forest while we waited for them to arrive.

Vixa continued to explore our surroundings, running around like crazy while she explored all the new smells. Thankfully she seemed to better behaved than Imuna, keeping her movement to running around rather than teleporting.

She made a sound I’d never heard her make before and then ran over to the rest of us. There were some rumbling bushes a minute or so later, and then both Arkus and Fenra poked their heads out of the forest. Cautious as ever, they also sent two members of their pack along the edge of the clearing, making sure it was safe before they called their pups forward.

They recognized my friends and I, so we didn’t have to go through the same routine that we did the first time, though there was one new arrival that they didn’t know. After greeting her companion, Fenra walked over as she inspected Vixa. Amazingly, Vixa stood her ground against the much larger animal and even raised her front legs off the ground to stand taller so Fenra didn’t have to bend down so much.

They both sniffed at each other for a minute before Fenra turned around and her mate took her place. While he and Vixa inspected each other, Fenra raised her head slightly and barked. More bushes started rustling and then the six pups and two older wolves made their way into the clearing.

The pups were a little shy, but they easily recognized us and didn’t need to be prodded like they did the previous time. Until they saw Vixa, that is. Vixa noticed them at the same time they noticed her, and Vixa’s tails started moving a little bit faster. She was only slightly bigger than they were, which meant that they were perfect playmates. She started running towards them which caused them to scatter, thus starting a little game.

Vixa was faster than they were so she easily caught up, but it was six on one. Any time she would jump on one and start playing with it, the other five would pounce. When she turned to the ones that pounced on her, they would scatter and she would have to chase them down. I don’t know if she knew that her playmates couldn’t teleport or there was another reason, but she didn’t teleport even a single time while they played.

It didn’t take them very long to get tired, and after fifteen minutes or so Vixa ambled over and climbed into my lap. The wolf pups weren’t very far behind, all of them having followed their new friend over. A few of them dropped into a pile on the grass, while the rest made their way over to my friends and I.

The pups were rather tuckered out from the excitement, so they took a quick nap wherever they had lain down. For some of them that was while they were being held while the others curled up in the soft grass. The downtime allowed us to ask Floyd and Tamara questions, though before long Vixa and the pups were wide awake and enjoying the attention they were being shown. Tamara even took out a water feeder that was similar to the one in my room so the wolves wouldn’t have to make the kilometer long trip to get to the MacKenzie River.

We spent the next four hours playing with the pups, making sure to spend as much time with each to give us the best chance of a bond forming. They had brief spurts of energy resulting in a couple of power naps that had them good to go after a short while. Each time they were tired, we would each pick one up and lay it in our lap while we stroked their soft fur.

All good things must come to an end, however. At the end of those four hours, Arkus and Fenra determined that it was time to go. We said goodbye to the wolves and then watched as they made their way to the treeline. When Vixa realized that they were leaving, she started whining, though she didn’t try to teleport out of my arms and follow them.

“You’ll see them again, Vixa,” I said to her. “It probably won’t be for a while, but we’ll be back, okay?”

She made a noise that sounded like a soft little chirp and then watched as they entered the forest. When they were gone, Tamara put the water feeder back inside her storage and then opened up a portal back to her office. Once there, I set Vixa down on the couch and then took the Beacon out of my inventory so I could retrieve the cube.

“All done,” I said, walking over and handing it back to Tamara. “Abi finished examining it while we were visiting the wolves. She said that she is almost one hundred percent certain that she can duplicate it, though it will have to wait until the dragons are dropped off on their new home. Apparently it will require both a ridiculous amount of mana and a special shielded area of the ship to be created to facilitate it. She ran a bunch of simulations and determined that jumping into hyperspace prevents someone from entering or exiting the enclosed space. It doesn’t do any harm to anyone inside of it during that time, but would definitely be an inconvenience. She sent you all the data so you can look over it and make changes to your cubes. They still need a name, by the way.”

“Thank her for me, will you? That could’ve been very bad if we started mass-producing them with that flaw. And believe me, I know. I’ve been trying to come up with a name for them for a while but haven’t found anything I like.”

“I assume you’ve talked to Kor Gidres if you’re thinking about mass producing them?”

“Mhmm. He helped me set up a corporation and I’m already in the process of patenting them. After that, it will be only a matter of time before production starts.”

“That’s awesome! Anyways, I think we’re going to head out. When do you think you can take us to see the wolves again? After we get back from our trip, of course.”

“It depends on when you get back, but we’ll stick with Wednesday and Saturdays going forward.”

“Sounds good to me,” I nodded. “Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome, see you after your trip. Bye, Vixa!” Tamara said.

We left Tamara’s office, heading towards the elevator to take us back to the main floor. As we walked, I turned to look at my friends. “So we grab some dinner and then spend a few hours in Battlestate?”

“I’m in,” Mason replied. “If Tessa and your sisters want to join us then we can fill them in on what we’ve been talking about.”

“I’ll get them to meet us for dinner, if they’re not there already,” Anja said. “We can discuss it over dinner and then hop into the game.”

“It’s not a bad strategy,” Aleena said after we told her what we were thinking. “Similar to stock prices, I’m betting that there are historical charts for each type of ore. I’ll take a look while we’re on our way to the asteroid field and see how everything is trending. Since we’re probably going to need to upgrade our ships a few times before the explosion happens, we definitely shouldn’t stockpile all the ore we mine, though. For example, if we get three crates full of platinum ore tonight, we should sell off one of them immediately and store the other two.”

“I’ll do some research and find the company offering the most secure warehouses. We’re going to be storing some high-value materials, so we’ll want to make sure that other parties can’t easily break in,” Alexis added.

“Since we’re planning on working on this over the next few weeks, we should probably spend all the money we have now, both on upgrading our ships and getting the appropriate equipment so we can start hauling back radioactive materials. That’s probably where we’ll get most of our money,” Lucille said. “We’ll probably be able to corner the market on radioactive materials, at least for the moment.”

Aleena nodded. “Upgrading our ships should be the priority, though. It’s been a while since we’ve seen that other group, and they could have upgraded their ships since then. If we don’t upgrade them, then it could be us that needs to flee.”

“Well, we’ve got nearly seven hundred thousand credits to work with, so I say we trade in the Marble Express and pick up one of the Staris-class light cruisers. That will give us four times the cargo space and greatly increase our firepower. It should also make it easier to install whatever equipment we need to deal with the radiation, right? What’s that involve, anyways?”

“I’ve been looking into that as well,” Ben said. “It’s a lot easier than I was expecting it to be, but it will be expensive to get started. First we’ll need to buy crates made out of a lead-based alloy called Sterium, as well as enough of the material to line the floor of the cargo bay. It’s much lighter than lead and is also quite a bit better at shielding against radiation. Besides that, we’ll need to buy six of these special emitters and place them around the cargo bay. When we activate them, they will bathe the cargo bay and the outside of the crates with a special type of energy that will greatly increase the rate at which radioactive materials decay. What would naturally take thousands of years to occur can happen in about twenty to forty minutes.”

“Wait, if these emitters produce some sort of energy that gets rid of radiation, won’t that make any radioactive materials we mine useless?” Mason asked.

“Nope. While the Sterium shields against radiation, it also stops the energy from passing through it. As long as there are no gaps in the crate, the materials will be absolutely fine.”

“And it’s safe? I would assume that anyone who comes in contact with the ore will have to stand in the cargo bay while those emitters do their job.”

“Perfectly safe,” Tessa said, speaking up for the first time. “My father has a mining company that frequently mines radioactive materials, and they use the emitters that Ben is talking about to keep everyone safe. The issue with the emitters is their cost.”

“That’s right,” Ben nodded. “I’m not sure how much they cost in the real world, but in Battlestate they’re about fifty thousand credits each. That would put us down to a little over one hundred fifty thousand credits for upgrades and the Sterium we need.”

“That’s not a lot, though I’m assuming that the light cruiser wouldn’t need many upgrades?” Anja asked.

“Just some better focusing crystals and some heatsinks, I think,” Ben answered. “The reason we decided on the Staris-class light cruisers is that we’ll only need a limited crew to man it since all the weapons are energy-based. The shields are pretty good on it, as are the engines, so we don’t need to focus on upgrading those too much. It shouldn’t cost more than twenty thousand credits, at most, to upgrade those components.”

“I think we can work with what’s left. The light cruiser will be a lot more capable than the Marble Express, and we can probably increase the fire rate of the frigates or upgrade the shield emitters so we can take more hits.”

“Well, should we get going, then?” Mason asked.

The last time we played we had rented a pretty big berth at the space station, one that was easily big enough to hold our cargo ship and the two frigates. Now, though, all that was inside it was the mining pod, our armor and weapons and our supply of food as we waited for our new light cruiser to be delivered. The cargo ship ended up taking just over fifteen thousand credits off the price of the cruiser. It wasn’t too bad, considering that we purchased it for eleven thousand two hundred credits and spent double that upgrading it.

The Guild was also going through the trouble of installing the new focusing crystals and heat sinks we purchased which would allow us to head out as soon as we picked up the Sterium crates and floor panels. The girls had already had their ships upgraded, both having only taken teams a few minutes to clamber all over the ship and swap things out.

Our new ship finally arrived, the thick doors opening to let it inside. We were watching through a window that allowed us to see into the berth, giving us the first view of the ship we would be using for the next few months of in-game time. Mason and Ben were pretty excited as the much larger ship was flown into the berth, though I was a bit more reserved. I had one of the most powerful ships in the galaxy in the real world, after all.

After the two hundred twenty meter long ship landed and the berth was re-pressurized, we opened up the hatch and headed over to the ship. A ramp started extending from just below the entry hatch, which ended up opening moments later. Before it even reached the ground, a man was walking down the ramp carrying a tablet in his hand.

Like the first time, I had to sign for the ship, though as soon as that was done the man headed towards the doors we just came from. That was fine with us, as we wanted to get going. Ben and I picked up some of the boxes of food and began carrying them to the galley while Mason headed to the cargo bay to open the doors. By the time the food, armor and weapons were loaded onto the ship and stored where they needed to go, Mason had piloted the mining pod into the ship and secured it. We found him checking out the cabins and staterooms as we were on the way to the bridge, so we stopped for a moment to check them out as well.

They were quite a bit bigger, and were better furnished than the ones on the cargo ship were. The best thing about them, though, was probably that each of them had their own heads, including a shower. The captain’s stateroom was the nicest, as it should be. While the furnishings in the other rooms were made out of metal, everything in the stateroom was made out of wood.

When you first walked into the stateroom, you were in what looked like an office, with a wooden desk off to the left-hand side and a couch and coffee table along the opposite wall. On the right-hand side was another door, which led to the bedroom. Taking up the majority of the space was a king-sized bed that sat inside of a beautiful wooden and aptly named captain’s bed, with drawers on either side of it.

There was a small closet that would be able to fit a few pairs of clothes, as well as another door that led to a spacious bathroom, at least in comparison to the tiny ones in other cabins and staterooms. Along with a stand-up shower, there was also a jacuzzi tub that sat in one of the corners. All in all, it was a very nice stateroom and I could see the looks of jealousy on their faces.

We held off on exploring the rest of the ship, instead heading up to the bridge so we could head over to the Miner’s Emporium to pick up the supplies we needed. Including space for the emitters and the mining pod, Ben had calculated that we would have space for roughly forty-four crates of ore, which was nearly four times our previous capacity. I wasn’t sure that we’d be able to fill that amount of crates in the next five or six hours of normal time, but we could definitely give it a shot.

It was fortunate that all of the Sterium crates were already put together, as even the smallest of holes could make a batch of ore useless when we turned on the emitters. It meant that we would just need to fill them up and put the lids on before moving to the next one. The big downside of them being ready to go was that we had to take the time to line the cargo bay floor before they could be loaded onto the ship. Ben said that Sterium was lighter than regular lead, but it wasn’t nearly as light as I thought it would be. It took two of the workers and Mason and I to move the big two meter by two meter sheets into place before locking them into place.

Thirty minutes later, the entire floor of the cargo bay was covered in dark grey metal and the crates could be loaded in. They didn’t use any high tech gadgets to get that done, using slightly more advanced forklifts to stack them four high and twelve across, except for one corner where the mining pod would be positioned.

The last of the items to be loaded onto the ship were the six emitters that we needed to cleanse the cargo bay, mining pod and my suit, since I would be in there helping move the crates around. Each came in their own secure padded container and were stacked against one of the walls where we could easily get to them. Before we started mining, we would take them out of their cases and extend them to their full height, slotting them into holes that were in each of the four corners. The other two would be slotted into their own spots to complete the rectangle and give us full coverage.

Now that we had everything we needed and our ships were upgraded a bit, it was time to head to the asteroid field. Though our new light cruiser had better hyperspace engines that would allow us to get to the asteroid in half the time, the ships the girls had weren’t nearly as capable. After setting the course and transmitting it over to their ships, we all entered hyperspace and would arrive in approximately four hours.

We used the time to fully explore the ship using the tablet as our guide while we went deck to deck. We decided to go from the bottom up, so we took the elevator down to deck six to start with. It was the smallest deck on the ship and held a number of water and oxygen tanks that were separated from each other so one lucky hit wouldn’t drain us of an essential resource. There was also a sewage tank at the rear of the ship that would allow us to quickly dispense of any waste.

The majority of space on the fifth deck was taken up by the two huge power cores that kept the ship running. Each one was about forty meters long and twenty meters wide, which left very little room for anything else. It did contain all of the workings for the life support system towards the bow of the ship, as well as a bunch of replacement parts in case something broke.

The fourth deck was a mix of storage and living quarters, with five rooms on each side that housed the inner workings of the pulse cannons that were mounted on the port and starboard hulls. There was also a laundry room that looked big enough to do the laundry for everyone aboard the ship.

The third deck was where the bridge, mess, galley and officer living quarters were, as it was the most protected floor on the ship, having three floors below it and two above. The bridge being located near the center of the ship seemed to be a common occurrence, as many of the ships we had looked at had the bridge in a similar spot. There was one massive difference between the ships we’d seen in-game and a ship like Abi, however. All of the ships in-game only had a couple of cameras that allowed us to see what was going on, but all of them were piped into a couple of forward-facing monitors. Abi had hundreds of tiny cameras that were located all around the ship, allowing for a full panoramic view.

Moving up to the second deck, we found a floor that was similar to the fourth floor in that it contained living quarters and storage. The only real difference was that there was no laundry room, so it seemed that this was the floor that would house the majority of crew. If we ever had enough crew to man it.

The first deck was different from the rest, as it was broken into four different areas, three of them being rooms. The first was an exercise room, equipped with all sorts of weight lifting equipment so the crew could stay in shape. The next room was actually a twenty-meter by ten meter pool with showers and lockers at the back of the room. There weren’t any signs, so I assumed that it was unisex. The last of the rooms was actually a theatre, having enough seats to fit about fifty crew at a time. At first it seemed like it was a room for entertainment, though the podium off to the side suggested that it could be a briefing room as well. The last area was actually one that encircled the other three, and that was a track for people who liked to run.

We headed back to the bridge when we were done exploring. There would be much more to learn about this ship than there was for the previous one, and it was almost much more likely that we would keep it for a while to put that knowledge to use. The consoles themselves provided us with much more data than the ones in the Marble Express had, allowing each of us to read through the manual at the same time, rather than have to take turns with the manual.

By the time we arrived at the asteroid field, we wanted to have at least some understanding of the ship’s capabilities, in case we got into a fight. For me, that was reading about the engines, shields and inertial dampeners. Especially the inertial dampeners. I needed to know how much better they were because of the limitations of my Straesse body.

Ben spent his time writing a few programs that would allow him to instantly transfer power to wherever we needed with a push of a button. I had thought that learning how to write programs with an entirely new computing language would be hard, but he had no problem with it. Once that was done, he read the same information I was reading. He’d be at the helm while I was in the cargo bay, after all.

The only thing Mason was focusing on was the weapons, for now. There were only four hardpoints on the Marble Express, but there were a total of ten on our new ship, which meant that he would have a much harder time using them. It would have been nice to have one of the girls over here to help them out, but they were needed where they were.

When we were about ten minutes out, we got up and headed to the armory so we could get into our armor. We had gotten pretty good at getting into the armor, only taking a few minutes to get suited up and then get back up to the bridge and man our positions. I activated the screens which would allow us to see outside the ship and watched as the stars blurred as we passed them. It was also pretty cool to see the Wasp and the Hornet flanking us as we flew through hyperspace.

When we were sixty seconds out, I opened up a channel to their ships. “Ready, ladies?” I asked.

“Definitely!” Tessa, the captain of the Wasp replied. “Same plan as last time?”

“Assuming we don’t run into another group, yes. The Wasp will search for high-value asteroids and the Hornet will cover us.”

“Aww, we wanted to search for asteroids! Sitting around waiting is so boring!” Lucille complained.

“You’ll get your chance,” I chuckled before getting serious. “Alright, ladies. Fifteen seconds out, get ready.”

I watched as the timer on my console slowly counted down. As soon as it struck zero, the stars stopped blurring past us and the familiar asteroid field appeared.

“Multiple contacts! I’m reading two Awaga-class cargo ships and four Zeon-class frigates. The cargo ships are the same ones we’ve seen before, though it looks like they’ve upgraded since we last saw them.”

As he spoke, one of the screens zoomed in on the enemy ships. It looked like their two mining pods were rapidly making their way to their respective ships, and the frigates were maneuvering to place themselves between us. As soon as the two mining pods were aboard, the two cargo ships turned while the frigates started towards us.

We still had some time to decide what to do, so I turned to Ben. “Are those frigates something we need to worry about?”

“If we were looking at a basic Zeon-class frigate, I’d say definitely not, but I’m unable to tell what upgrades they’ve made, if any. The fact that they’re on their way towards us suggests that they’re pretty confident in themselves.”

“I agree,” Tessa said. “They’ve probably been here for hours already, so they would have jumped to safety if they thought it was a fight they couldn’t win.”

I looked over to Mason. “Whattaya say? Time to see what this baby can do?”

“Hell yeah! This isn’t going to be like last time.”

“Ladies, you heard the man. Shields to full. Let’s get ready for a fight!”