It has been 9 years since my canines fell out. I now have reached the age of majority in vampire society. I have completed higher education and have been practicing piloting for the past 6 years. So far I have amassed almost 2 years spent behind the controls of a void ship.
Tomorrow Mara said I would finally be able to leave this decrepit listening post. However, she has news that she thinks I need to know. Currently I'm walking the halls towards the command center. The halls have started to grow dirty ever sense the cleaner bot had to be taken apart to give emergency maintenance to the last repair robot—we still lost it however. Personally I am feeling conflicted to be getting out of this death trap.
I arrive at the door for the CIC and the door opens before I enter. "Mom why are we doing this in the command center? I can hear and visualize information your second self in my brain wants me to know." I was curious as to why she didn't share this through my parallel thinking that she uses to monitor my mental and physical health.
"The parallel me doesn't have a way to show the amount of information I need to show you. Additionally it only knowns what you know. The parallel me is in all intents a separate highly similar individual." I nod remembering the summary of some of the abilities I have back when my fangs fell out 9 years ago. Just because I can remember everything doesn't mean it will come to mind quickly without trying to search for it.
"Lilith when you grow older and set out I will tell you more about your traits. For now you just have to know you have a photographic memory, increased physical abilities and quicker mental processing than you do right now, and may develop a parallel thought line. This will all come with the benefits like..." I come back to the present remembering she would tell me the rest of my abilities.
Before I can even mention the promise she made she interrupts me. "We will discuss my promise I made 9 years ago but first I need to tell you some bad news."
I wait a moment to hear the bad news fearing the worst and the station is finally about to breaths its last. "The station is failing." I mentally pump my fist at being right then quickly grow anxious as I am currently onboard said station.
"Do not worry though Lilith, as there is a way to prevent a complete failure. For the past 2000 years I have been detecting an ever increasing amount of hyperdrive signatures. These seem to becoming from far away and keep getting closer. They belong to humans, it seems they have survived our conflict in the past." My eye brows shoot to the sky and I start to fidget with my hands behind my back while trying to look calm. After all if they find out that there are still vampires I will be killed without hesitation.
"I know what your thinking Lily and its okay they seemed to have forgotten about the war in the past 30,000 years. What signals I have managed to intercept have had no mentions of the Runethari Empire or serious discussions of vampires. Everyone treats them as an archaic myth of their even more foolish ancestors." I let out a sigh of relief no being brutally and slowly murdered for me or forced to live a life of a solitaire running away for a living. I gradually rein in my breathing despite it not being all that quick.
"Humans have also seemed to have regressed both societally technologically and... genetically as you could probably guess. They pick at the ruins of precursors not knowing it was our technology they are replicating. However that is unrelated. For now we need supplies and the two silver bills on the table closest to you can buy them."
"Why? ... I mean this is a Sovra aren't these things extremely common it was basically the common currency for both sides of the Human-Runethari war." I was surprised so I blurted out a question. I quickly shut up and waited for Mom to reply but she must have sensed I had more on my mind.
"It seems they have lost the ways to make Sovra and during the war large vaults were destroyed as you would know. Every Sovra uses quantum entanglement to connect to another one. This makes it impossible to counterfeit due to the unique signal a Sovra produces when its other is still intact. Humans have yet to recreate this and thus every Sovra is worth magnitudes more due to them being both finite, difficult to find, and yet are treated as collectors items of the rich and powerful."
I quickly move my hand back to my side to stop myself from touching the Silver grey thin slice of alloy resting on the table. I then focus back onto the hologram where mother currently is projected from.
"While I have been unable to find an exact amount, a single Sovra should be enough to buy everything we need to repair the listening post. The problem is we need to make a hyperlane map towards the nearest inhabited system. The one in the data banks is multiple tens of millennia out of date so I will be sending probes to find a safe path."
I start to think how long that would take and I cant help but think it would take days with our current low processing power. That would of course include us using a lane that has gone extinct as references. To find a completely new route with no reference of previous lanes it could take months. That's if we brute force it with hundreds of probes.
"During this time I wish for you to explore the system and find out what remains of the other location in this system. However that will have to wait until tomorrow as I need to perform last minute checks on the 'Astro Dawn' your new vessel. Feel free to go to the hanger and I'll explain its specifications. Though it will be in the human's way of doing it to prevent potential problems."
"Okay mother, also will you explain to me my other traits? I remember you said you said you would discuss it later."
I get a response back but it sadly wasn't the response I had hoped for. "I'm sorry dear but it will have to wait till tomorrow as well. I need to dedicate all the processing I can to making a comprehensive list of items required. Ever since the last repair bot failed I have needed to shut down processors, or risk it being permanently damaged."
I merely nod and sigh, morose at how little we have to work with. However I'm looking forward to repairing it all.
I head out of the command center and take the shortest route I know towards the hanger. I here a faint thump against the structure and considering the lack of alerts must have signaled mother sending out the probes.
after a few minutes of walking abandoned hallways and climbing creaking metal stairs I reach the main hanger. This location has been one of the few places I was forbidden from entering until only recently. The others being the command center, computer servers, and the information processing room. I can go to all of them now but I will probably never visit the latter 2.
I walk into the room and using a MDI turn on the lights and my jaw drops. On the opposite side of the massive hanger was a giant void ship. It was painted dark crimson red and midnight black in the colors of the Runethari Empire's flag.
I quickly estimate the size of the ship thanks to my schooling and it seems the ship is between 370–400 meters long and about 100 meters tall if the torn apart wortka mech is anything to go off of.
I rush to a table and immediately pick up a data crystal and scan it with my tablet. After a handful of minutes I get an alert for a download being finished and I immediately view it shows a small specification list and some papers left behind by the designers. I quickly realize this was the ship I've been piloting in the simulations Mother always had me do every few days. I was often also piloting it for fun so I was more than experienced.
Vessel designation: Nightingale Class Experimental Corvette
Vessel name: Astro Dawn
Max boosted thruster acceleration: 0.332 m/s²
Max thruster acceleration: 0.288 m/s²
Max FTL velocity: 8c
Max hyperdrive velocity: 320c
Long distance (>11ly) safe hyperdrive speed: 200c
Crew requirements: 1 minimum, 3 ideal
Class V "Corvin" MPD Antimatter Boosted Thruster (Antimatter: 2.4kg/3kg)
Class V "Shadow" FTL drive
Class V "Black Mist" Interstellar Hyperdrive
Grade V "Night ink" Reflective Composite Hull Armor
Grade V "Wraith Deflector" Layered Plasma-Nano Shielding and Deflection System
1x Class ■ Spinal mounted 500mm quasi-relativistic Cannon [4 shell available: 1 shell loaded],
10x Class IV, Stern mounted 250cm Self-Guided fusion missile pod [60 missiles loaded]
30x Class ■ 5MW Continuous Particle Emitters
42x Class IV 24 cm Electromagnetic Point defense turrets (kinetic rail-assisted)
16x Class V 500KW Laser close in weapons systems
Class V EWAR suite
32x Class IV Emergency Chaff dispenser [256 canisters available]
Class V Tacyonic sensors
Class IV Atmospheric thrusters
Class ■ ████████ Generator [REQUIRES IMMEDIATE MASS INJECTION, 50 YEARS UNTIL EVAPORATION], [3/3 LOCKING DEVICES FUNTIONAL]
Class V Gravity Manipulator.
Class IV Inertia Dampeners
Class ■ Progenitor Spatial Manipulator [3/3 AUXILIARY SPATIAL LOCKING DEVICES FUNCTIONAL]
Class ■ Progenitor Upper-dimensional Radiator
Class ■ Sentient AI Locus [AI STATUS: N/A]
>Further features will require sentient AI core to be enabled<
NOTE, DOCUMENT WAS CREATED 20 YEARS AGO BY STATION AI DESIGNATED MARA
NOTE LEFT BY AUTHOR OF THE DOCUMENT: I EDITED THIS TO FIT CURRENT HUMAN TERMINOLOGY (CLASSES/GRADES).
When I saw the specifications and what they meant I smiled. Class IV is apparently state-of-the-art technology by present day human standards. Moreover class V is currently Impossible to replicate and repair. If I gave them this ship they could take it apart piece by piece and still be unable to fully replicate it.
What causes me to furrow my eyebrows are the class ■ modules. My eyes dart to the generator of the ship and I feel a pang of anxiety as I look at the output power my vessel and how long it can run. "Hey mom is this safe, and how are we supposed to inject fuel into this unknown reactor? I'm concerned about what that generator is, I have an idea and I hope I am wrong."
"Yes Lily it is safe, though if a projectile were to hit the generator it would likely cause a catastrophic error that would lead to the hypothetical Penrose blackhole possibly escaping confinement or outputting harmful levels of high energy particles. Don't worry about the time remaining for the hypothetical singularity, when we develop the system we will surely have waste material we can dispose of into the generator. I calculate we will need roughly around 2 megatons of material to bring the generator to its past mass. There will be plenty of slag we can use, and I will take care of feeding the blackhole so please don't attempt it yourself.
"I feel I should also mention but you wont have to worry about the blackhole being let loose as long as we keep the 3 spatial locking devices functional. They are vital to maintaining the safety onboard the ship, they prevent any changes caused by the main system from coming apart immediately. If it fails the quasi-relativistic cannon will also probably tear the ship apart if we fire it. Failsafes are in place only requiring one to remain functional."
I nod feeling my anxiety lighten then take one last look at the massive ship and turn my back heading towards the simulation room.
I plan on practicing dogfighting just in case. I'm left wondering what human space is like. I quickly get sidetracked drooling contemplating what their blood might taste like. I hope one day I can be famous and prove how much of idiots they are. After all they will look up to what was once their mortal enemy. With that final amusing thought I exit the hangers giggling at the idea of it.
Authors notes for in universe handwavium technologies
Hyperspace/Hyperdrives:
A dimension that is closer but not totally inside the 4th dimension allowing for a minor manipulation of time to accelerate a ship faster than physically allowed. This so called hyperspace remains safe of extremely common and unpredictable temporal fluctuations that can rapidly age a crew into dust or reduce age until they are nonexistent all within moments. Though sometimes ships will be lost never seen again usually the cause is hypothesized to be malfunction this is extremely rare on class III hyperdrives and nonexistent on Class IV and V hyperdrives thanks to failsafes and self checking systems. Though Class I and Class II Hyperdrives are becoming more and more dangerous as their parts become older and unmaintained—and a general lack of safety features.
Storage crystals:
They come in two forms, permanent and temporary. Permanent crystals can store large amounts of information by removing microscopic amounts of material from the inside of the crystal, this leads to crystals that can have the bottom half be extremely cloudy from the light scattering, the data can also not be removed so require extremely advanced technologies to etch. They are used to store important documents/design schematics due to the material used being extremely durable.
The temporary crystals are almost physically the same but are capable of self healing these are often used to store observational data, or data that is deemed unimportant. Secret messages are almost never used with this technique both because the crystals cost a lot to manufacture and tend to heal rather quickly. The message becoming shorter and shorter until they've lost meaning or were completely deleted.
Quasi-relativistic cannon:
Functions by shotting a projectile that houses a miniature subliminal drive—The precursor to the FTL drive. This will cause massive stress on the cannon usually requiring a barrel that is extremely thick and made of highly durable material. They were usually only attached to orbital defense stations or battleships due to this. The way they fixed this issue is obvious, using the spatial manipulator to physically freeze the cannon's entire barrel relative to the ship, and have its secondary devices that also serve as failsafes to maintain that atomic scale spatial locking.
Tachyon sensors:
Senses the superluminal particle known as a tachyon to find the current position of an object lightyears away. Works on objects travelling with an FTL drive but cannot detect hyperdrive travel. Sometimes used to send messages but messages are easy to intercept (if you also have a tachyon sensor nearby) and only through a process that requires high levels of computational resources and large stores for observational data can the message be successfully decoded. Though it only decodes itself after the initial message is sent, before than it is always observed as background static to prevent paradoxes. Countless researchers have tried to fix this problem, though it seems the universe itself makes the data look like background noise. It remains the case no matter how many computers are dedicated to observing said noise. The usual time frame is for a message to arrive no later than 1 week before it is sent to keep the costs needed to manufacture the temporary storage crystals low.
Gravity manipulator:
Repulses or attracts graviton particles to skew how gravity is felt in the nearby area. More advanced devices get smaller and use less power.
Black hole Penrose generator:
Uses a microscopic black hole as the heart of a Penrose sphere to generate ridiculous levels of power. Requires secondary devices to keep it locked in a position relative to the ship. Sidenote, as containment fail the generator loses output due to other devices requiring more power to keep it in position.
Spatial manipulator:
The magnum opus of progenitor tech, reverse engineered from a hyper advanced race—even in comparison to the Runethari and Humans of old—this device can change how atoms themselves are positioned in space. This technology was barely if at all understood by the Ancient Runethari and only just entering the experimental phase.
Upper-dimensional radiator:
Using progenitor technology the discovery of how to phase heat into other dimensions safely and reliably has been made possible. Instead of using a hyperdrive to pump heat into hyperspace that can which has become easily detectable on dedicated sensors, you can use an alternate dimension (usually a higher dimension like the true 4th—Not our 3+1D—dimension is used) to spread heat in a places across wide stretches of time. Upper-space Radiators use the inherent instability and uninhabitability to hide these signatures, though it goes without saying if something fails the consequences could be more than nothing short of disastrous.