I snap back into focus and turn back to report the problem to mom. There is only one problem: the door I entered through is shut. I start to panic, fearing the worst until I hear a voice through a speaker.
"It's okay, calm down Lily I was successfully transferred, I am safe you didn't fail. The ship had a separate better way of storing my memories. The Locus seems to work as a test for a new form of solid data storage. Even my processing speed is massively increased thanks to the Quantum-Hard Light Topological Processor. Compared to my old slowly dying computers, this is like getting everything fixed then massively overclocked. Even then that is an understatement."
I let out a sigh of relief and head back to the command seat then take a seat in it. The moment I sit on the chair the panels turn pitch black and then cycle towards transparent. They don't show the wall behind them but rather they seem to allow me to look through the ship.
After some pointers from ship Mom, I figured out that I can change how each screen aligns and how zoomed in it is with each sensor. So I can have a panel show me what's behind me, and I can even have mom change them for me automatically.
"Okay Lily, I know you want to find out what the screens are capable of, but we should head to our current objective. Here I'll help you control the ship while we take off. This ship is slightly different from the vessels you piloted. All launch controls and orientation thrusters will be controlled by me." Mom's voice sounded throughout the room.
I snap back to what's currently the most important: finding supplies. While we are doing this the probes will try to find an accessible hyperlane connecting us to an inhabited system. It shouldn't take long with the records of the previous hyperlanes, we just need to recalculate the computation sequence, it’s needed to actually follow the path without getting lost, or worse caught in an hyperspace eddie.
I see the hanger bay lights start to flash yellow then about half a minute later flash red. When the lights turn red Mom turns on the thrusters and gravity generator. The craft slowly rises as the plasma is created from the metallic hydrogen and the energy siphoned from the microscopic blackhole, allowing the craft to lift off the ground. The fuel/propellant gauge for the thruster shows we are sitting at about three quarters full. It seems to use pure hydrogen plasma which is easy to find and use.
We leave the hanger using the main thruster. It takes us a few minutes of constant acceleration at a safe output—to not melt everything in the hanger—to move the 400 meters to completely clear the hanger area. Traveling a few kilometers away from the listening post, Mom turns the thrusters on for real, and we quickly accelerate to the 100m/s needed to activate the FTL drive.
"That was faster than I expected! I was thinking it would take tens of minutes."
I change one of the screens to the rear sensor to see what the listening post looks like. I only saw a nondescript asteroid with no visible openings, or signs of it being a listening post. Taking a moment to think I just assume they disguised and camouflaged the exits and sensors really well.
"That was actually close to half the full acceleration. You can rest assured it won't be so fast you can't find time to fire your weapons." Mom replied to my statement with her usual seriousness and I breathed a sigh of relief.
With the ship having cleared the asteroid—which, on second glance, looked like a root crop—it seemed similar to the potato that humans are known to grow. The only odd thing was that the rock appeared to have merged with a more roughly cylindrical asteroid in its ancient past.
I glanced forward again and put more power to the systems monitoring the sensors. After all, I don't want to be surprised by anything.
The 'Black Mist' FTL drive automatically started charging and the only way to tell was a faint sense of time flashing forwards, hundreds of hours going by in mere seconds. I feel my mind struggle to understand what it was observing, followed by the tiny ball that was the local star growing bigger ever so slowly.
"ETA to planet Beta Charon 3, +30 minutes and 19 seconds(+-30 seconds real space) from initial activation of FTL drive." An automated announcement with a distinctly androgynous voice unlike Mother spoke through the intercom. The screen's that provided a unique piloting experience then faded to black then to white. I got up and walked towards the door.
After leaving the CIC and heading back towards the living quarters I got notification on my tablet. I pulled it up and smiled. It seems this ship may not be the end of the goodies.
'Lily, I’m sorry I cannot speak, but I wish for you to know that there is something in the armory that may prove useful. The crates that are missing any color designation should have supplies for an elite reconnaissance squad. I'll let you find out what that means for yourself.'
I change directions and start walking just short of a jog towards the stairs. After going down a flight and following the map on the tablet I arrived at the somewhat large armory.
I searched and found some boxes on carts that seemed to contain spare ammunition for the point defense turrets and lenses for the lasers. I also found provisions and in one stasis box some time frozen blood. I decided to leave that in there for later.
Finally after dragging 3 uncolored boxes I had found to the center of the room—and leaving one large crate resting near a wall—I opened the first one. Inside was a cloak folded and when I took it out I found it to have odd metal plates on the outside. Below the cloak lay a box labeled, 'Attachable Magnetic Anti-Railrifle Plaques.' It also had a warning that showed these things used high voltage somewhere.
I looked at the guide and it seemed that the magnet clip for the plaques would repulse it, allowing it to intercept a rail-assisted sabot and deflect it off course. The cloak can sense—thus deflect—railgun sabots that were fired within a 10 kilometer radius of the wearer. The cloak also protected me from stray fragments of metal but wasn't much use beyond fragments. It also mentioned that as long as I wear the cloak and use a small adhesive steel plate I can put the plaques anywhere on my person. The cloak seems to use a lot of inbuilt sensors and processes the information with the aid of a belt attached computer and battery.
The plaque was a rectangular plate, and had a small spool for a wire at the opposite face. Apparently the metal plate which is a solid capacitor would magnetize the 10 meter long 1 millimeter thin carbon nanotube wire after being launched away, and magnetically attract the rail sabot to deflect it. It was single use but was easily attachable. The purpose wasn't to serve as an invulnerable defense against hybrid coilrifles, but rather to protect against marksmen fire.
The cloak was colored a dark navy blue and the tiles were given a matte navy blue finish. The enter thing seemed to be more useful in stealth which begs the question why it was made to stop railrifles. When attached the plaques would definitely look weird, but weird was better than dead.
The next thing I found was a weapon. It seemed to be a standard kinetic rifle but much more bulky and blocky. The manifest listed it as the XCA-18E "Aeth" hybrid gunpowder-coil subsonic pulse rifle. It seems this is another experimental weapon. This uses a battery—that seems too expensive, powerful, and complex to be used in a soldier's weapon—to power magnets to achieve extremely high speeds. It has enough power to fire 6 coil assisted sabots but the rest will have to come from chemical primers.
The crate following was slightly bigger and seemed to only contain clothes designed to make sneaking around easier with sound suppressing shoes and an assortment of various camouflage outfits, that can be made into a ghillie suit if need be. It even came with another four sensor cloaks.
Finally the last box and the most annoying to move—to the point I gave up on the idea—and happened to be the largest. After managing to crack it open with effort as the lock required to input the new ship generated password—which of course was a few hundred digits long and contained Noblesse Runethari and Human script—I manically grinned at what was inside.
Inside rested a full suit of cutting edge light power armor. It seemed to be 1.9 meters in height. The entire thing looked sleek and had many tiny hexagonal plates. I'm not sure what my ancestors had with geometric patterns designs, but I wasn't going to complain. I gingerly hopped into the armor feeling its enclose around me and started to move to fit my form the best it could.
Eventually it finished and turned on and I saw it connect to my MID. A screen activated in front of my eyes making the face plate completely clear. I turned my head and noticed a lack of any usual problems that come with most power armors like pinching or delays in movement. After messing around for a while—and discovering it had an active camouflage feature—an alert came over the top right of the screen.
'ETA to Beta Charon 3, 9 minutes and 30 seconds.' I squeaked in surprise and got out of the power armor and grabbed the cloak—to have something to wear over my skintight eva suit—and Vesper rifle.
Arriving at the CIC I walk towards the chair and sit down and wait for the screens to cycle. I am greeted with the sight of a planet rapidly approaching like a timelapsed video. The dark grey rock seems to be mostly made of silicates but does have a dense albeit hard to reach metal core.
Above the planet lies a small moon that seems little grander than an asteroid that was captured in orbit. It was named Beta Charon 3A and was equally made of silicates, though it had some aluminum, nickel, and traces of copper or at least that's what the databank entry reports but it was written 30,000 years ago or so.
Taking a look through the rest of the data on the system, I can't help but feel a tad disappointed, though the system has metals—though the amount can be said to be moderately below average—it has some problems, they are difficult to extract due to depth and/or impurity. The rest of the materials are just ice and rocks.
Thankfully the deep Oort cloud that goes from about 3ly to 3.5ly is made mostly of extremely valuable materials. A major problem presents itself however, you would be forced to travel there without a hyperdrive taking at a minimum of 219 days one way with a class V FTL drive—which usually operates around 7-10c.
I sigh as I finally see why this system lacked any major development, there is absolutely no beryllium and other key elements needed for maintaining a fusion reactor, so it would all have to be imported. That and mix all the above with metals being difficult to extract and purify unless you want to travel for months. You get a good idea as to why this system houses a listening post, Beta Charon is a money sink of a system...
We finally exit FTL above the planet, lowering ourselves back to the normal 3+1D universe, checking the orbits of planets. We arrived 30 minutes and 27 seconds after we initially started our superluminal journey. I promptly get the coordinates for the ancient supply dump left behind. I set course and engage the auto pilot leaving to start putting on the shameful eva suit.
Finding the suits in an equipment storage room serving as an airlock, I find 5 individual suits sitting on shelves. They are all mostly colored grey with the dark red and black of the Runethari serving as secondary and tertiary colors. They are also incredibly good at insinuating the figure of the wearer.
I stare at the mirror and admire and despair at my well shaped and yet toned body, hoping against fate I will never have to wear this in front of a human. My long white hair currently in a crown braid and my ruby red eyes completing and applifying my already beautiful looks. Mother always said I looked exceptional, already more beautiful than the average federation human.
A few moments later the ship lightly shakes and I tap the elevator that I used to enter to start to lower.
When I reached the ground I noticed an overhang with an entrance that went further. Entering the cavern I found a remarkably anticlimactic sight. It truly was a supply dump. Everything was exposed to empty vacuum and what was either sensitive or perishable was in crates. A few carts remained though they seemed to be still usable thanks to the lack of atmosphere.
After going through a data crystal left behind I found large amounts of repair materials, large stacks of metals to be fashioned into any parts that aren't here for whatever reason, multiple unassembled repair robots, and a few combat automata that stood a head or two above me. Overall it was quite the haul.
Eventually after transporting everything and taking a last look around I saw a single container. I got a call from Mom and paused when I heard the contents. It was at closer inspection an unassimilated AI kilomatrix. Mother said to take it and put it where I took the original after she copied some data back onto it at the plinth. She wanted to reinstall her back up as her old core is needed for the ship AI. I grabbed the crate and returned to Astro Dawn after sliding it onto the glowing pillar—now devoid of mother’s original crystal— the crystal quickly turned cloudy. In the meanwhile I could only lament the lack of remaining fuel.
We returned to the listening post and I released the repair bots to start their work. I also left behind a single combat bot to serve as security. As we were just arriving the probe reported success. It was apparently thanks to the massive processing power given to it by the Astro Dawn, with sensor readings from the past 2000 years, and finally the old starmap that made the probes only take 0.75 days to complete the process. Sadly the probes were used up as they only were capable of sending the route and were designed to be quick but disposable.
Should we ever wish to use them again we will need to recover them and refuel their thrusters but that can be a project for later. Currently we have little fuel remaining in the reactor. I used a seemingly forgotten hydrogen fuel canister in the ship to add another 2 weeks of fuel. Sadly we still may be too late interstellar travel can take weeks depending on distance and hyperdrive rating. The journey to the nearest inhabited system doesn't have an estimated time yet.
With a sense of urgency I quickly installed the back up mom back into its place, grabbed the 2 sovra on the table, and returned to the ship. "Well mother time to go visit the humans... Here's to hoping we don't get delayed." With that and a countdown from the automated announcer the stars elongated and we left our home star.