After a few more days of little more than studying, Miliam found herself in the mechanic’s shop once more, but this time, they had gone further in. She stood in front of a window looking out over the dry dock the Astrum Vitae was suspended in, taking up most of the space in the bay. The last time she’d seen the ship from the outside there hadn’t been much lighting, but now, she had a full view of its entire length.
From here, it looked enormous. Around 110m in length, and maybe a quarter of that in width. It had just three decks, and it resembled little more than a very long box, broken up only by a tapered section around the captain’s quarters, the mysterious cloister, which was a half-hemisphere near the bow, and the bridge, with its transparent windows. Despite the overall boxiness, the ship’s profile was softened by rounded corners and edges.
Miliam could guess that the small bulbs dotting the hull were the laser mounts; they seemed to be little more than emitters, with the bulk of their equipment safe under the hull. The missile launchers were entirely hidden, probably covered up by armored ports that remained closed until ready to launch. She had expected the ship’s sole lance to protrude like a gun barrel, but either it was similar to the point defenses or it had been removed because of the damage it had taken.
Although Miliam had never specified anything about paint, the mechanics- or maybe Aoibhe- had coated the Astrum Vitae in black, with white dots and running lights across the hull making it resemble a star scape. The look was fitting, considering the ship’s moniker. GCS Astrum Vitae was printed on both the port and starboard sides, along the fore side of the second deck.
Even looking over the entire hull closely Miliam struggled to identify the thrusters, but she saw ports here and there, outlined by the dry dock’s intense lighting, that may have been hiding them. Overall the ship had a very low profile, with very little protruding outside of it save for the point defenses. According to her studies this was a requirement of the translocation drive; the hull profile was preprogrammed, and the less consistent the shape of the ship, the harder it was to define it for the teleportation spells.
“Satisfied?” asked the mechanic, Roar, who Miliam was starting to think was the only employee in the entire shop. He was probably just their assigned representative though.
“Looks good to me, but I don’t know what to look for. Aoibhe?”
“I would have to run some diagnostics before I can give a verdict,” the pilot said. “We’ll have Engineer inspect the repairs once they board and contact the shop if anything is amiss. That alright?”
“As ye will. If anything we worked on ain’t t’ satisfaction we’ll fix it free o’ charge,” Roar replied. He held up a flat device. “Settle up on th’ payment and yer free t’ take ‘er out.”
Miliam wordlessly swiped her grimoire and confirmed the payment. Her funds dropped precipitously, ending her brief status as a millionaire. Unless the value of the ship counted towards her net worth. She had no idea how being rich worked.
“Thanks fer your business. Come back when yer ready to have the rest of ‘er worked over. That plating in particular is a safety hazard.”
“Best we could afford…I’m just happy if she stays airtight,” Miliam told him. It was truly a shame the original armor had been so badly degraded, but replacing only the penetrated section wasn’t an option. Even this mundane alloy plating was better than the ruined skin the Astrum Vitae had been wrapped in before.
“I’ll go ahead and release th’ ship. Clear the bay for us, if ya would,” the dwarf said as he plodded off towards the dry dock controls. Aoibhe turned and headed for the docking arm connected to the ship, with Miliam only a moment behind. The arm disconnected and folded up the moment the airlock had cycled them inside.
On the bridge, Miliam sat uselessly in the captain’s chair, looking over the pristine command center of the corvette. The chairs had been replaced with a configurable model that could accommodate the physiology of most GC species, and the controls looked like they actually belonged on a space ship instead of a WWII battleship.
A change she hadn’t been expecting was the addition of a copilot’s chair beside Aoibhe’s, bringing the crew station count up to four. She would have to ask about that when Aoibhe was done with startup procedures, because as far as Miliam knew, they hadn’t been interviewing potential copilots.
Regardless, Miliam still couldn’t make heads or tails of the bridge controls, but she could at least read the labels now, and Aoibhe seemed satisfied. Every station had several displays with touchscreens, with buttons, dials, and switches relegated to panels around the peripheries.
“All systems green. Firing thrusters in three, two, one, go.” The moment Aoibhe said go, the dry dock wall ahead began to recede, and soon they were in the void and Aoibhe was communicating with West Gate control to find their new berthing assignment. Miliam didn’t feel a thing as the ship maneuvered thanks to the inertial sinks, which seemed to be more effective when the corvette moved under its own power instead of being moved by the station.
Left with nothing to do at the moment, Miliam listened in and sent Abigail a message when they had been given a new berth, just as the woman had requested. She wondered what Abigail wanted to hire them for- and why them in particular. It could have been a trust thing, but she might also simply be working on a shoestring budget and hoping to negotiate a lower price by hiring a vessel in poor repair.
Abigail responded almost immediately with ‘omw’, which surprised Miliam. She’d expected a much more lengthy reply with proper spelling and punctuation from the scholar, not text speak even someone from the 21st century would recognize. Also, had she dropped everything she was doing the moment she received Miliam’s message?
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Minutes later, a sound from her own seat drew Miliam’s attention, and she saw that one of her own displays was indicating they had successfully docked with the station again. She made a note in the back of her mind to find a manual for this model of corvette and figure out precisely what her seat controls could do, and what her displays could be used to see.
Miliam’s train of thought was broken again when she heard Aoibhe mutter ‘seriously?’ from the pilot seat. Aoibhe took a moment to look her console over before hitting a couple of buttons and leaving towards the console.
“Go ahead and meet us on the bridge,” she said, then turned towards Miliam. “Did you let Abigail know our berth?”
“Uh, yeah. Are you telling me she’s already here?”
“Aye, she-” the door opened behind Miliam and she spun her seat to see Abigail walking onto the bridge. “Not wasting anytime, are you?”
“Indeed.” Abigail took a moment to look the bridge over. “Would you prefer my analysis first, or my proposition?”
“…the analysis, I guess,” Miliam decided, wanting to know how she’d ended up here even if it wouldn’t affect anything in the end. She wouldn’t go back if she could.
“Very well.” Abigail took a seat in one of the crash chairs at the back of the room, crossing her legs beneath her robes and settling her hands on her knee. “To start, I will expound upon the spell you activated by mistake. Put simply, it was a teleportation spell. Cast properly, it would merely have altered your coordinates. However, the spell was activated utilizing the galactic center as a reference point instead of the planet. As a result, in the fraction of a second the spell took to activate, the movement of the Earth left you behind in the void of outer space.”
“How am I even alive then!?” Miliam asked, horrified at the thought of teleporting herself into a vacuum with no protection. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant death.
“Fortunately for you, the spell was well-crafted with a failsafe preventing you from moving in unsafe conditions. Unfortunately, it lacked a failsafe to prevent the translocation from occurring at all. As a result you were suspended between two sets of coordinates until one of the two overlapped with a survivable environment.” Abigail frowned as she shrugged. “In a way, the primitive methods utilized by the mage who wrote the spell saved your life. A modern spell crafted without complete fail safes would have simply swapped your position with anything in the destination, but this one was designed to make you phase slightly out of reality, move you rapidly between point a and point b, and then return your state to normal.”
“What are the chances she’d ever have happened to run into a safe place?” Aoibhe asked, posing the question Miliam hadn’t wanted to know the answer to herself.
“Incomprehensibly miniscule. Accounting for that location being this close to Earth physically as well as temporally? Statistically impossible. I would consider it literally impossible were the evidence not before my very eyes,” Abigail responded.
“I don’t really want to think about being stuck like that forever,” Miliam said before they could explore the topic any further. “Uh, you said you were just starting with that one?”
“Indeed. Regarding the spell you intentionally cast, there is information I must impart. It was incomplete by modern standards. I expected as much given the age, as it predates the human discovery of DNA. The writer could only operate based on their own understanding of the human body, and as a result, it was only able to alter your appearance.”
“My period started a few days ago,” Miliam argued with a confused look on her face. She wouldn’t even have the right parts for that if Abigail’s explanation was true.
“I would hypothesize that you were merely bleeding. As the spell writer would not have comprehended the mechanisms behind menstruation, it is probable that they simply designed the spell to make the target bleed once per month. Moreover, it was likely intended as a curse,” Abigail explained, ending on an ominous note. Miliam could tell she was just waiting for her to ask the question by the expectant look on her face.
“So…how do you know that?”
“My reasoning lies in a contradiction. While there are parameters for the target’s body, there are none for hair or eye color. A spell intended for an individual might have hair and eye color preset, but would also have preset values for the body. On the other hand, a spell for general use should have allowed customization of the hair and eyes. What does this tell you?” Again Abigail stopped and waited. Given that she worked at a university, Miliam put it down to a habit built from teaching.
“I’ve know magic existed for like, two weeks. I have no clue,” Miliam answered.
“The hair and eye color selections were meant to stand out,” Aoibhe posited in Miliam’s place.
“Indeed. I believe the spell’s purpose was turning a target into a woman and highlighting them as having been cursed. The parameters are in place to ensure the victim survives the experience, not for their benefit. In other words, the transformation is incomplete.”
Miliam deflated a bit at that news. It wasn’t something she expected to hear after the high she’d been riding since the change. But Abigail wasn’t done.
“Not to worry, this would be easily correctable by a proper specialist in sex change spells. However, given that you are likely not yet a citizen, it will be necessary to go to a private practitioner, which will be quite expensive, particular if you would like the operation sooner than later. Which brings me to my next topic.” Abigail smiled faintly, finally getting down to business. “What do you know of the Observers?”
“Nothing.”
“The basics.”
Miliam and Aoibhe gave very different answers, but Abigail was prepared.
“Miliam, have you ever wondered why so many species in the Gaian Collective so resemble humans?” she asked rather than explaining. It seemed a non sequitur, but Abigail was probably going somewhere with it.
“Well, yeah. It doesn’t make a ton of sense evolutionarily, right? And Aoibhe said something about aliens not being humans with different hair colors, but…” she trailed off, looking at Aoibhe in the pilot seat. She was far taller than a human, but could be mistaken for one with a medical condition.
“She herself greatly resembles a human, yes? That answer to that is simple.”
The woman paused for dramatic effect.
“All member species of the Gaian Collective are human.”
----------------------------------------
Codex Entry: Gender Change Magic
A subset of transformation magic and, due to the level of research put into it, also the safest form of it. While most transformation magic is risky at best, gender change magic operates on well understood genetic principles to alter both the appearance and genetics of the target. This can be either a partial change, similar to non-magical transitioning, which then requires hormones to maintain in part, or a full change that alters the target entirely.
Due to the occurrence of transgender people in nearly every species, different forms of this magic exist depending on the race of the caster. The only exceptions are those which, like the lizardfolk, have biological processes that can alter sex after birth, similar to clownfish. Gender change magic requires a fair amount of knowledge regarding genetics and chromosomes, so specialized mages exist that cast this on willing patients. Due to natural magic resistance and the complexity of the changes, this requires both consent and physical contact to accomplish, and constitutes a lengthy operation.