I awaken to the sweet voice of my girlfriend, “Pen pen, did you spend community funds on a Princess Yacht?” accusing me of being a corrupt official.
“No, Mel, this was my lvl 16 artifact. I figured, that we could study this . . . craft and get some more levels. And it will take me to space. Baby. I need to be in space or I’ll die.”
“Oh my god, no. You do not get to have a space jones, Penny.” I pout, on the verge of crying. I just woke up from horrible pain, and the woman I love is denying me my dreams.
“But Meli, this plush conveyance fits 10 and has a bedroom.”
She blinks at me, dumbfounded.
“I guess we’re moving in then.”
I sit up and kiss her cheek. “Glad you’re okay, and glad you don’t want me to give back my ship.” I look around to find that I’m lying on a couch with tables nearby. Is this a dining area on a shuttle? No wonder it’s named Bougie-Boy.
“Is it time for a community meeting?”
“Considering Summers is about ready to flay you to get to them Tokens, yeah, it’s time for a meeting.”
I reach up to get help, and Melissa grabs my arm while staring. “Your new tattoos are glowing?”
Shit. I’m moving farther and farther from being able to go back to Earth. Maybe next time I mutate my food to aether skill. At least the tattoo looks cool.
We step off of the Yacht and out of pure curiosity I push on my skin to rotate the dial like the rod would have done, and the tattoo moves and the ship disappears into light and flies into my arm.
“That is so damned cool.”
“Yes, your freakishness is very amazing, come on now. Chop Chop.” Melissa teases me as she leads me back to the farm. When she pulls me in, a bunch of people, like 20 or so are looking at me. Might be duplicates. No idea why my vision is fuzzy.
“Hi crew! Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas?!” I say to the room. Am I drunk?
“IS she drunk?” Eyes asks.
“No, she’s just coming off a rather extensive mutation, it seems.” My bestest girl says.
“Community stuff! We got an assimilation gift! I haven’t accepted it yet.”
“That ship wasn’t the gift? What the hell was that then?!” Botanist is accusing me again, I don’t like her. Melissa snickers at my thoughts. Lousy mind reader. I snicker and tell her I love her.
“The ship was my t-1 advancement artifact. See friends, T-1 is a solid goal. ANYWAY. We have a gift and a substantial amount of points for progress. What’re we thinking about?”
“We don’t have access, Penny, and Frannie can only look.” I ask Tessa to show me the buttons to push to get everyone in the room viewing rights to the colony console. I appoint Katie as temporary administrator, beneath the mayor which is me. For now. “Ah, the community options are . . . limited without access to the CETs for the Ansible.”
Voting system for the 5 of us, engage, but Mayor gets two votes in the event of a tie. “We now have a representative democracy! Woo! We have access to the exchange, we have a gift waiting. Lets look some things over and see what we need.”
This is where I caution you not to exceed your species technology level.
Can you interface with Ophelia to make sure what I’m seeing deconflicts with what she’s seeing?
Yes, her neural link much more robust than when we started.
Wow, my list is much different. I want to buy some of these things for me. But no, I need to get Frannie onboard and I’m not going to do it with thievery and corruption.
“I’m voting infrastructure for a thousand with the Aether-electric generator and waste processing plant that the acquisition gift wants to give us.” I say.
“And I say we should invest in the advanced farm plots for more food.” Our botanist says.
“And I say we look at town fortifications.”
How much would that cost us Tessa?
Food, space, and protection for 1k residents. 478 CETs. Of 567.
They argued when I told them, but shortly after the bickering started, I asked which they would willingly sacrifice. None of them spoke up.
“Is there any reason it has to be this building?” Katie asks.
“Just that the ansible building has to be within the borders of our claim. If we were near the mountains we might bet more defensible area out of it.”
“We might also invite more digging back doors.”
“What if we need these points when we get back to Earth?” and the elephant in the room is addressed.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“We wouldn’t be able to use them until we built a new ansible.” I answer.
“You two did that in three weeks, how hard can it be?” Viper asks.
Katie flips her tablet to the crowd. “It would take approximately thirty years to build an orbital ansible large enough to connect with the closest Andromeda relay. Which is, as far as I can tell, here.”
“That’s even with the new star charts?” I ask.
Katie nods. “Sol is in the middle of nowhere. There seem to be more promising habitable planets much closer to Earth, but no proof that they are Matrix ready.”
“Thirty years? Can’t you just order one of those things and transport it home?”
“Eyes, buddy, I don’t mean to be insulting. But I can’t even transport 7 people to Earth right now, let alone a piece of tech the size of a moon. “
“I just think we should discuss this with the others too.” Eyes chimes in.
“Eyes, I’m not trying to exclude anyone, but we’ve got the leaders of Science, Logistics, Habitat, Communications, and Militia here and I though that would be sufficient to have this meeting, and the others said they didn’t want to be involved. Has something changed?”
He shakes his head.
Viper chimes in, “The others are worried that the two of you,” he points at Melissa and me, “seem happy here and that may influence your priorities.”
“It definitely will,” Melissa says, “but it doesn’t change that Penny promised to get everyone to Earth that wants to go.”
“I do want to stick it to Copernicus command for abandoning us here. If you can’t trust a promise AND vengeance, what can you trust?” I get a smirk from Viper, which lets me know he understands vengeance.
“I looked at the Exchange and saw that our weapons choices aren’t that great and they’re expensive.” Viper notes.
“My AI tells me that the Exchange limits to the native technology of the colony. Also, she says that the exchange price is for a pre-made weapon bought from the artisan that made it.” I hear some rumblings of “bullshit” and “that’s a dumb way to do things” but I obviously have more insight as the Human Primus. “However, we can buy a fabricator that takes exchange blueprints and schematics that can print any mundane tech for a much-reduced price. Save the fabricator costs 100CE. Think of a CE as 2-5 million US$ before you get any ideas.”
Melissa whistles.
“So, 300 ish million for a machine that can make any mundane weapon?” I nod, “Then I agree on that fabricator and six weapon prints.”
“Can it print any mundane schematic? Even building and farm parts?” I nod. “I agree on the machine, not the weapons.”
“Okay, purchasing the fabricator, 3 weapons forms and a fab-lab slash workshop.”
“I asked for 6.” Viper accused.
“Yeah, and I figured that you could select your squad weapons and ask me for any artillery you need. Since we can’t buy magical small arms or large weapons, and I can make larger scale runic devices, I figure I get a lab for the CEs you’d spend on artillery pieces.”
He grumbles at that but accepts. I feel that he wanted other options but hearing that magic was on the table, he relented.
“What about us?” Francesca asks. “Do we get fun toys too?”
“Sure, as long as it someway benefits Summer Station. Viper’s request helps in our defense against the Aether warped animals that are coming, and my request for a lab helps Melissa, me and the new tech fam to advance. As long as it’s nothing straight personal, I’m game to put it forward. You all also have the ability to vote against these proposals, but haven’t yet.”
“Well, I want a seed and GMO lab.”
“Nice, will that enable animal husbandry, such as raising my bacon-chickens?” She nods reluctantly.
“Any not agree?” Nobody made an indication. Oof, 180CE down, 327 to go. “Okay, I would also like to add that much of the personal stuff, like weapon schematics and plant genetic patterns can be bought with AE, or aether exchange tokens. Kill some warped beasts or advance the Colony, and get rewarded with AE. Spend as you will. The other CE’s will be kept and reviewed by this committee as we move along. If Katie, the very logical logistician, feels we need to spend 10CE or less on incidentals, she has the permission to do so.
“Keep in mind that community projects earn CEs as well as achievements. Not sure exactly what that entails, but the cagey info I’m getting suggests that.”
“Can we spend some CE on berthing? The ground kinda sucks.” Eyes asks.
“Katie, can you take care of the placement of the two buildings and the Powerplant?” She nods and starts listing necessities for long-term berthing.
While everyone’s distracted by the talk of comfy beds, I sneak out of the ansible hall.
“That was almost as stressful as a hull breach.” I huff for breath while I walk out to a dense set of trees and start wailing on them with my saber.
If there’s anything you wanted to purchase for yourself, now’s the time. Your ansible is about to run out of energy for a 48 hour period because of the buildings and the Utilities Center.
Sure Tessa, but all I can think of are some mass-engraving tools, an enchanting matrix, and a personal dimensional storage space.
Two of those exist as practicable. Mass-engraving is beyond your magitech level. You currently have 12,241 AE for personal use. The enchanting matrix can also be bought with CE. The bedroom on the bougie boy was intended as a cargo bay and can be considered personal dimensional storage.
I totally forgot that it counts. The “bedroom” alone is like 30-33 cu. meters. I still want a backpack though, and maybe a sidearm if I get desperate.
“You okay hon?” I hear a familiar voice from behind me.
“Yeah, Mel. It’s just that trying to embody a leader is taxing.”
“Seemed to do fine to me,” She hugs me from behind. “Better you than Francesca or Viper though.”
“I get that, but just ‘cause I got magic and tech first makes me the best leader? I find that hard to believe.” I raise my arm to squeeze her hand and hold it. “I got us stranded on a planet 2700 light years from home, after all.”
“Nope. You don’t get to blame yourself for that. Morris did that. And you have to remember, that not believing yourself is basically accusing a hyper intelligent AI that has assessed like a thousand sentient races that it was wrong in its assessment of you. You’re not arrogant enough to believe that are you babe?”
No, but I can sulk that hard.
“You’re right. I like the idea of starting a space-faring colony away from Earth, but the idea of leading it terrifies me. But no one here wants this like I do, so who else will man the controls?”
Melissa hugs me tighter. “You know I have to return to Earth before I commit to a life here right?”
I can’t help to laugh about that. She pinches me, thinking I’m making fun of her. “I expected that, Meli-bear. I want to see how long it takes me to need to come back, and I assumed I’d be in a lot of government meetings, meeting your family, etc.”
She turns me for a quick kiss and a smile, “What about your family?”
What about it? Those political pieces of . . . wait. I’m the mayor of a colony and ruler of an independent state. “Holy shit, Mel. My parents might actually respect me if I came back responsible for a whole star system.”
“Pfft. Even if your dad was the US President, they’d have to respect the Empress of Astoria.”
“Meli! We talked about that.”
“Yes, we did, and I reserved the right to call you whatever I wanted to, my Queen.”
Fuck me. When she says the last one it shakes a shiver of lust through me. The kiss on my neck as she says it, doesn’t help.
“Melissa, is this you asking me to test out the new shuttle?”
“I hear there’s a waterfall with our name on it.”
I can’t help but cackle at that. Holy shit, there totally was. “We have to do a planetary survey first, then a Lusty Falls trip.”
“I could do with some exploring. Can I bring some work with me?”
“Of Course? What am I, some slave driver? No Mel. I just need some passive sensor monitoring and you can do whatever you need. I’m sure Viper, Fran and Katie would love the data. Not to mention that we should get some colonization xp and CEs.”
“Sure, invite your girlfriend on a date and then tell her we have to work all the time.”
I cough before summoning the Shuttle.
/Summer Station, DE Astoria. Setting out on low-orbit survey. Approximate mission time, three days./
/Copy Astoria. We need rare metals and any condensed aether sources./
/Will live-update world map. Astoria out./
Melissa and I climb into the Bougie Boy and she calculates the best coverage for our sensor suite. There’s apparently an auto pilot on this bad-boy so I make sure the preferred sensor distribution altitude and speed is set and proceed to ambush my girlfriend with smooches.