Beecher ended up bringing Meeker and Eyes with him. They didn’t talk much save to request materials or tools, but they sure did work. They beat my timeline by a week and started smoothing out the cave with a hatch overhead into a usable hangar and machine shop.
“Have you guys thought about what you want to do?” I ask the three former Sailors.
“Eyes has trouble communicating right now, but he wants to work with logistics woman, O’Connell?” Eyes nods and I can’t fault him. If he wants to keep his six upper appendages busy, she’d find something.
“As cool as this base is, there’s not much Aether out here. If you’ll have me, I’d like to be a citizen again, but also work on my track’s Force Journey for this tier?” I smile at the giant furry nerd.
“If you end up training with a curmudgeon Muppet I want video. And welcome back.” Tap a few invisible buttons with my hands, Mel thinks it’s hilarious I still do this, and add Meeker back to Summer Station. “I’ve drawn up sort of a work Visa for the two of you. Nine months, but hopefully we’ll be on our way by then. Eyes, talk to O’Connell for the terms. Beecham, what are you thinking for yourself?”
“Honestly, Admiral, I want to stay here, on Mercy. Watch the base, piddle with the systems, and do some destructive skills testing on the surface.”
“Nice, sounds fun. I approve. My AI is going to send you a list of subsidized aether rich consumables so your training doesn’t suffer if you don’t want it to.” He thanks me, performs a ridiculous salute and walks back toward Mercy Outpost.
“All aboard the shuttle to Astoria! Next stop, Summer Station.”
***
“Are you sure he’s going to be okay?” Melissa asks while holding onto my arm.
“He’s over two meters of fur and fang Jedi. He’ll be fine. It was mean of you to laugh at the fanny pack I gave him.”
“It’s a pink and baby blue purse that you put belt hooks on, of course I laughed. Are you spending all day in your shop?”
“I was planning on the Outpost. I want to upscale the warp array today and it might get dangerous and boom-ey.” She looks worried, she always does.
***
Days after seeing Meeker walk into the woods, I have blown myself up no less than six times.
“Admiral, respectfully request you start working in that area” he points to an unfinished wall of the hanger. “A storage nook would feel great over there, and if you’re excavating anyway . . .” he lets his voice trail off, grinning from ear to ear.
“Yeah, yeah. I think I’ve hit a wall in this respect. Might as well fill an order while my brain takes a break. Do we have any titanium nuggets left?”
“Not much, probably not more than a handful. I could stretch that if you wanted to alloy it.”
“You can forge?” I’m stunned that I didn’t know this before.
“Had the opportunity to pick a trade that aligns with my track, so I’m and Elemental smith as well.”
My excitement nearly burst out of me, “Yes! I just learned an aether forging mod. Can I work with you while you alloy?”
“Sure, but what are we trying to make in the long run, so I don’t ruin anything in the process.” He asks while walking to a corner with a few basins and holes near the cave wall.
I follow, assuming that’s where he typically forges and smiths. “I need to make two more Sundering Staves and figured with aether forging I could get a little more oomf out of it.”
“Then we best use steel alloys then, titanium doesn’t take to magic unless things are close to perfect. Don’t worry, I have a stainless mix that takes spell infusion well.” He shows me a bangle and a few rings that he claims are elemental focuses that reduce the time needed to gather power.
“I’ll defer to the expert, but I’m trying to infuse the metal with raw aether, or as close as I can come.”
“Does the talent tell you what you should do and how much?” I shake my head, to which he shrugs his shoulders and starts the process of heating the metals in a crucible-shaped pot
As we begin, my skill feeds me some information about injecting aether into the project, which causes Beecham’s skills as a blacksmith to change the quantities and timing. In the end, we end up pouring some of my pure-ish aether ink into the molten mixture, dab the fluid on his hammer every so often, then quench the rod in a vat of oil with some of my aether ink mixed in.
When we finished, the rod started glowing and then the aura was sucked into the rod with a slight ping.
“It’s so weird when it does that. Good to know when you succeed at making something though.”
“Can I take a look? I recently got an assessment skill.” He shrugged, set the rod on his anvil and stepped aside.
Fire Infused Titan-steel Rod 2A-S A metal rod infused with aether, forged by an Elementalist.
“I’d say two hours of failing was worth the skill-ups. Mind showing me the finished product after you engrave it?”
“Be happy to, it’s just going to take me a few days.” I pull up a menu and send him 100AE for his efforts.
“Wow, that’s, that’s a lot. Are you sure?”
“You just taught me how to use my new skill and made this thing for me. Sure I’m sure. Plus, it’s incentive to help me in the future.”
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He smiles at that, nods, and flicks a two-fingered salute before walking away.
Now that I have a side gig for a few days, time to line up some stuff. Tessa, can you arrange to have our two Sundering staves sent to clear our debt? She pings affirmative.
/Hey Mel, I’m hitting a roadblock on the upscaled warp array, and I was wondering if you had time to look at it? Maybe there’s an interface solution to what I’m trying to do./
/Sure, but Katie and I are really close to extending our control to geo orbit, so after I get my reward, I can work on your problem.
/Sounds great babe, give Katie a kiss for me. Great work!/ Look at me trying to be supportive.
Tessa, do you know why our rod was tier 2?
When artisans combine different disciplines, their efforts are superior. If they combine them properly, that is. Meeker’s blacksmithing is well into the Expert level, and with your enchanting and engraving skills giving you an innate ability to feel-out changes, it appears to enhance the overall product.
***
The familiar glow emerges from the rod, and I wait until it recedes before I inspect my latest mining tool.
I assess the new creation in my hand.
Titansteel Rod of Descruction 2AAS Sunders objects into their base components. Works on biologics. estimated 12kAE
That’s unexpectedly horrific. I was happy that the original runeshape didn’t work on biologics. Now it seems that the Matrix is nudging me toward making weapons. First a warp-annihilator, now this?
May as well test it hey? I point the rod at the section of the cave that Beecham said I should explode more and see a flickering beam of white land on the wall. I draw a rectangle with it. The rod seems to be asking for another parameter, so I imagine pushing the rectangle 10m into the wall. The white beam then spreads to cover the whole rectangle as though it was not projecting the image of the wall, until a flash comes, revealing neat stacks of components filling the new room.
Amazed at the new level of control we have for excavating, I leap and give a little cheer and a dance before I wonder what it does to bio-objects. But first, I have to carve out a room for myself and my explosions so Beecham can’t laugh at me anymore.
An hour later, I’ve done much more than just build myself a room. I built a hallway that goes downward and turns around in a box-shape back underneath the hangar, with each corner having it’s own branched-off room. My moon base definitely feels like a lair now. Maybe I can make larger cisterns or storage tanks for atmosphere like this? Too porous as is though.
I show Beecham the device I made with his help, he whistled appropriately and asked to borrow it when I was done with it. I would likely see if I could replicate the aether forging without the fire infusion to see if I could get a regular Sundering device instead of this monstrosity.
I ask him if he needs anything from planet side and he shakes his head. I have him help me load up the fluid transfer tanks anyway and then depart for Summer Station. With my thruster additions to the shuttle and my increasingly magical constitution, the trip is alarmingly fast. I end up testing the enchanting work I did on the bottom hull panels in re-entry.
We really should take Melissa up on her offer of a new bracelet so I can save us from your idiocy.
“Are you okay? The satellites had you decelerating way too fast.” Melissa starts checking me for issues, but what would you check for a g-force related injury?
“Relax hon, I’m fine. With Body of Power I have some different limits.”
She grumps at that, “I can’t properly chastise you when you have that much armor on. Have you been exploding again?”
“Just a little. It’s why I asked for help.”
“We think we have an idea that might work. Since you’ve arranged the synchronization as a continuous, parallel system, any significant disturbances would propagate. I modeled it in an electrical system and found that it resembles an under-dampened system whose small fluctuations end up amplifying each other until it breaks.”
“Oh, thank the Universe, it was driving me insane.” I grab her in for a quick side hug.
“It’s not fixed Penny, that’s just our idea of what’s wrong.”
“Sure, sure. But next you’re going to tell me that you and Katie have a way to get the controller you built to replicate what I was trying to do.” Melissa stops walking. I look toward her and see a frown. “What’d I say?”
“Your faith in us kind of ruins the fun of a big reveal.”
“Yeah, but imagine the skill upgrades we’re all going to get when we finish installing it!” She grins at that. Trots back up to me and grabs my hand to lead me the rest of the way to the ansible room.
I walk in to see a fully exploded network diagram of the shuttle and the magitech interfacing parts. “When did we get a holoprojector?”
“I bought a hard-light projector and saw no reason for it not to have a third dimension, so I fixed it.” Katie replies, happy at the wonder on my face.
I nod at that and take a few minutes to study the design floating in front of me. “How long is this going to take to install?”
“With Eyes helping, 10 days plus or minus 1. We’re going to need to leave the shuttle down here.” Katie replies, looking at her tablet computer.
“Any longer, and I’ll need it flyable to deliver supplies to Mercy.” She doesn’t say anything, but I have a backup plan if need be, so I don’t press it further.
“When you get that thing running, how long until we leave?” An electronic voice surrounding me says as a tarantula man enters the room.
“Oh! That’s cool that you got setup to talk this way. Timeline, hmm, week of testing off the ship, installation, integration another week, preliminary and final ship testing two weeks? Inside chance 4 weeks, outside 6-9 depending on how far we are with supply prep and ansible parts.”
“That’s also assuming that Atropos finds a suitable system to warp to within 500ly in the direction we want to go during that time. We will likely have to check several systems as the survey data from here to Sol is not very detailed. We would appreciate if Tessa and Ophelia could help as well.”
“Is it bad that I want to go back, but I’m afraid?” He minces his creepy little mandibles in worry.
“Nah, some of you got a raw deal on mutations. I had planned to commandeer a small Island in the South Pacific and use that as a base while we figure stuff out. But that’s a conversation we can have after the ship works. It’ll be weeks after we leave before we make it to Earth.”
“How can you be so calm about this?” He asks.
“I look calm? Alright then. Eyes, it’s mostly because before we got abandoned, I almost died twice. Since we got here? Maybe a dozen times trying to get this warp crap working, not to mention space tigers and mutant gorillas. Fact is, with you brilliant folk with me, I know we are going to make it to Earth. It’s Earth’s governments, Captain Morris, and the Supercluster senatorial body that I’m worried about.
“But, we’re going into these situations with more strength that we could have imagined possible and I don’t have to face it alone.”