Author’s Note: Not much to say here. Anyway I said two days between updates last chapter, but I might do 2-3 days instead. That’s about how long I’ve been taking to write each one and I want to keep my current backlog in case of emergencies that might prevent me from doing any writing for an extended time. Please enjoy the chapter.
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Chapter 1
“Uhh mm ed.” I woke with a splitting headache, and I found it difficult to even say the garbled mess that I did. I tried to get up but found that I didn’t seem to be able to move my body, it was almost as if I had never controlled it before. I steadily kept trying and eventually I was able to move my right arm enough to prop myself up. Looking around with my eyes I finally notice that I seem to be on my bed in my bedroom? I thought I was on the bridge in my pilot seat. The last thing I remember was those weird impacts after activating the warp drive.
“In uuu ere?” Once again, my voice was rough and it was a struggle to make the sounds correctly. I tried again and this time focused just on saying the one word properly. “Lynn?” I called out but there was no answer. That’s odd. I could hear the ship's power core running so Lynn should have appeared when I called. Actually now that I think about it I’m awake but the lights in my room didn’t automatically turn on either. This all added up to the obvious, but there was something wrong with Lullaby.
I tried to get up, but once again couldn’t seem to get my body to do what I wanted. It was almost like this was the first time I controlled my body or something weird like that. Since there was no way I could get to the mystery of what happened to the ship without being able to get up, I devoted all my focus to moving my body. With steady effort, I managed to make more complicated movements with my right arm and hand. Eventually I managed to control my left arm with the same dexterity as my right. Then I concentrated my focus to moving my upper body and neck, and with that finally I could really sit up and really get a look around.
The largest problem was that, as I manipulated more of my body, it felt like my already painful headache was getting progressively worse. By the time I sat up I felt like my head was going to burst. Sitting up didn’t help either. I was beset by a sudden rush of nausea. I felt like I was going to be ill which was just as weird as anything else happening, since it shouldn’t be possible for player characters to get sick. At least not this kind of sickness. I have to admit that that wasn’t much more than a passing thought though. I was consumed by the thought that I needed to hurry and get to the bathroom.
Struggling to move my legs while pulling myself with my arms, I fell off the bed. Hitting the carpeted floor, I felt like I was going to start vomiting right there but I managed to hold it back. Getting my bearings straight, I continued dragging myself across the floor to the bathroom door and straight to the toilet that I had never before needed to use, since the game developers had previously rightly decided that no player wanted to deal with that business in a game. As if seeing the toilet bowl ahead of me was a sign, I could no longer hold back and proceeded to vomit more than I could ever remember eating. If there was any good that had happened since I woke up it was the fact that at least the toilet’s sensor seemed to be working because it kept flushing.
Eventually, the nausea passed and I could no longer keep my body upright and collapsed to my side on the bathroom floor. As I lay there trying to recover my strength I could only wish the nausea had taken this headache with it.
At this point I heard steps in the ship hallway bringing whoever they belonged to closer to my room. I desperately struggled to rise, to be ready for the possibility of a fight, but it seemed like my stamina was completely sapped from the exertion I had gone through. I was trapped here awaiting whatever fate was in store.
I heard the door to my room slide open and a very familiar voice call out, “Mistress?” The footsteps came to the bathroom before looking in showing me Lynn in her android body. “Mistress you should have stayed in bed like I told you.” Lynn sounded exasperated. I was confused though, I don’t remember her telling me such a thing. She must have seen the confusion on my face because next she said “I told you that it seemed like the drive failure had a weird effect on you and you needed to stay still and relax until it passed.” She sighed, “I guess with how out of it you were when I brought you to bed, it’s no surprise you don’t remember. Come on Mistress, let’s get you back to bed.” She walked over to me and scooped my small frame off the ground effortlessly before taking me back to bed. She picked up a cloth and wiped my face before propping me up with some of my pillows. “Mistress, I used the synthesizer to make some medicine, it will make you sleep. Do you think you can drink it?”
I nodded my head at her words and she smiled before picking up a small glass and bringing it up to my lips. She tilted it and let the liquid flow slowly into my mouth, allowing me to drink it without strain. After I finished the glass I felt the headache finally start to fade along with my consciousness. Lynn was fixing me more comfortably in bed but I needed to ask her about the ship so I concentrated to form the word I wanted, “Ship?”
Lynn gave me a gentle smile before telling me “Don’t worry about Lullaby Mistress. She’s intact. Just some systems are offline, including my hologram and the maintenance droids. Luckily I could still access my android frame. I’ll give you a full report when you next wake up so please rest soundly, ok?”
I could only barely nod in response as the medicine fully kicked in.
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Waking up, the first thing I was aware of was the glorious disappearance of the headache that had been ailing me. Carefully moving my upper body to a sitting position, I wasn’t hit by a wave of nausea this time either so I can only hope that I’m over whatever happened to me. Also, I’m a bit annoyed with the devs if this whole thing was a result of that “increased realism” rumor. I don’t like being ill in real life, why the hell would I want to experience it in a game. Especially one I’m playing for fun!
My legs were still a bit unresponsive so I started working them a bit and after probably about five minutes I could move them as easily as normal. Which left really only one part of my body to get in working order. So over the next ten to fifteen minutes I talked to myself until my vocal capacity was back to rights too. After that, I slowly got out of bed finally becoming aware that I was wearing a set of pajamas so Lynn must have changed me at some point since I know I had still been wearing my flight suit when I had been given the medicine. I decided to do some exercising while thinking, Lynn should be aware of me being awake so she would probably be here anytime.
Based on the game scenarios, drive failures could lead to either a stranded in space scenario, necessitating an SOS be sent which could then lead to further events like being picked up by pirates, or a planet crash landing event. I wasn’t sure yet which scenario we were facing but I was hoping it was the planet landing one because a planet landing would always be on a habitable world. Of course I wasn’t sure that would still be the case if the update had changed or added something new but I needed to be a bit optimistic. I had already lost some indeterminate amount of time from this so landing on possibly a new habitable world would be a nice consolation. I’d just need to get the ship fixed and then send out a survey claim notice for the planet and this whole painful episode would be worth it.
It was at this moment that Lynn came into my room holding a tray in her hands. “Mistress, I detected you were awake so I made some soup for you. I guessed you would be hungry after sleeping for ten hours.” Now that she brought it up I was aware of how famished I felt. That feeling of hunger felt a bit different than I was used to, at least in game, so I could only assume this was another of the realism changes. I wonder how many changes there were that I hadn’t noticed yet?
Moving to the small table, I sat down and Lynn placed the tray in front of me. I decided now was as good a time as any for that report. “Lynn, can you give me our status report now?”
“Of course Mistress. I’ll just switch from the android body to make the report easier to give.” She walked over to the door before powering down. A second later her hologram popped up floating above the table. “I’ll start, so go ahead and eat Mistress.” Taking her advice, I began to eat.
“Mistress, just to give you a time frame, it’s been nineteen hours and eleven minutes since we activated the warp drive. In that time while you’ve been resting, I’ve managed to get most of the systems back online. A few like the maintenance droids and the exterior sensors refuse to come back online, so Mistress will probably need to check over those. The shield and stealth system are operating at peak efficiency, so we’re not in any danger at the moment. Additionally, we have crash landed on a unknown planet. I managed to avoid a worst case scenario by activating the landing thrusters before we hit the ground. I’ve scanned the outside hull through the systems and it seems intact too, but with both the maintenance droids and exterior sensors offline I have no way of confirming. As for it being an unknown world, what I saw of the the visible stars were unfamiliar by the star maps in my database so I can only conclude that we must be at the far end of the galaxy compared to where we were.” At these words I resisted an urge to cheer but I decided to just continue drinking my soup and let Lynn continue.
Lynn grimaced before continuing “That is the good news Mistress. The rest is definitely not good. For one we can’t seem to connect to the galactic net. It might be something in the atmosphere of this planet interfering but that doesn’t help us any.” I stopping eating to look at her in confusion, I mean if we couldn’t connect down on the surface then moving out to space wouldn’t be a problem after repairs were complete. Of course it would take extra time but not long enough to be a serious matter. Lynn seeing the look on my face decided to answer by opening a screen displaying the engine room. I could only stare in horror at what I saw. “Mistress this is the other problem. Whatever happened to Lullaby’s drive during that jump didn’t just knock us out of subspace, it turned the warp drive and the engines into melted scrap. Normally we could just repair the damage and be fine but for this we’d have to rebuild them entirely anew and we don’t have the materials to do that.” Lynn finished quietly. <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))>
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The last of my soup forgotten, “What about all the materials we bought at Felicity? We had a huge surplus to prepare for any eventuality!”
“Yes, we had enough for normal emergencies and routine maintenance but this is complete destruction. I’ve spent most of the time while Mistress slept reviewing the logs, and I still have no idea what happened to put the drive and engines in such a shape. Even reviewing records of ship malfunctions and crashes never mention anything like this happening before. So even if it’s just the planet atmosphere blocking us from accessing the net, there’s no way for us to take off to test that hypothesis either.”
Leaning back in my seat, I considered our options. Our engines and drive are scrap so the ship is stuck wherever we landed. Lynn didn’t mention anything about that so obviously we must have landed in a peaceful location. We don’t have the materials to build replacements, which means there’s no other option but for me to explore the planet and scan for mineral deposits of what we’re lacking. Still, is our synthesizer even going to be enough to build a new warp drive or engines? The worst thing though is if I need to leave the ship I’m going to be doing it with no information about life on this planet. Wait, there is another option.
“Lynn what about our orbital drones? We should be able to launch one of them into orbit and use that to contact the galactic net.”
Lynn merely looked at me with another discontented expression. “Mistress, that was the next topic I was going to bring up. Per standard operating procedure for an unknown world I launched one of the drones in order to get a better idea about our landing location and what might exist on this planet. The drone launched with no problems but upon reaching an altitude of one hundred kilometers the systems started sending back error messages shortly before the drone simply disintegrated.” She brought up another screen showing me images of our landing site, and then some that were from higher up. “As Mistress can see we landed in what appears to be a very large, dense forest but the images didn’t catch any sign of life. It’s possible anything that was out there was simply hiding from our ship’s impact, though.”
I nodded at her words and continued examining the images. From what I could see the forest was large. Based on the calculations included, Lynn was estimating the forest was at least in excess of a hundred fifty thousand square kilometers. Lullaby’s location was approximately forty two kilometers from what Lynn could determine was the eastern edge of the forest. The images from higher altitudes didn’t provide too much detail of the ground with the only thing really standing out being a mountain range further to the north. The information these provided was too slim for our purposes.
Returning my attention to Lynn I voiced an idea. “Lynn could we use the second drone and keep it at a relatively low height rather than putting it in orbit? An altitude of say, ten kilometers for example.”
Lynn looked thoughtful as she considered. “We could, but the drones were designed to launch into orbit and then from there function more like a satellite. We could assume direct control of the drone and make it fly in the air but it wouldn’t fly very long and it would be a haphazard flight at best.”
“I think it’s our best shot though for a good look at our surroundings. With luck, we’ll be able to map a thousand kilometers from the ship in every direction, which will give me a good direction for starting the resource search.”
“Do you want to me to handle that Mistress?”
I nodded, “Yeah I’ll leave it to you Lynn. I’m going to get dressed back in my flight suit and then go examine the maintenance droids. If I can get those working again, it will be a large help in fixing any problems that might come up later.”
“Ahh Mistress you should finish your soup first. Hopefully it’s not too cold.” She examined the bowl.
Checking it, the soup was still relatively warm so I finished it quickly. There hadn’t been much left. “Well, let’s both get to work. Bring me the results after you’re done. Oh and make sure you know where the drone lands, I might need to go salvage it. If possible try to make it crash somewhere nearby after the map is complete.”
“Aye aye, Mistress.” Lynn said with a salute and vanished.
Laughing to myself at her antics, I briskly changed clothes and headed to the storage room that contained the droids. On the way I opened my status and swapped over my classes to Technician and Engineer for the bonuses they provided for repair work. Upon reaching the room, I picked up the tool belt that was hanging on the wall and strapped it around my waist. Wasting no time, I opened up the first droid and decided to check first whether the droid was receiving signals from the ship’s computer properly. There were no errors there, so I advanced from there onward to the core of the droid where the orders were received and interpreted and that’s where I found the problem. Like the drive and engines, for some reason the core of this maintenance droid had turned into scrap. Inspecting the others turned up the same result. It boggled my mind how there could be such precise damage that left everything else untouched. Oh well, no sense in worrying about it, at least for these droids, a core was an easy and cheap thing to construct and replace, I’d just need to head to the synthesizer to do so.
I felt a brief rumble, which I surmised was Lynn finally launching the drone. She most likely took her time reprogramming it to make it less demanding for a low altitude flight. Hopefully the map would turn up some good news, otherwise the only option I see is checking out that mountain range.
Using the synthesizer was a simple task since it was programmed with all of the available schematics for parts and other goods. It was also connected to certain mechanisms that would transfer the required materials, if they were available in the connected storage rooms, to the synthesizer once a work order was entered. I browsed through the schematics until I found the model of droid core necessary and punched in that I required three and let the machine do its thing. I knew this would likely take some time so I sat down and decided to play around with my psi since I had realized that I hadn’t verified whether it was still working properly.
Thankfully, unlike my weird body mishap, my psi was just as functional as always, and I had the contents of my tool belt dancing around the air in lazy patterns in minutes. While I passed the time, I idly wondered what kind of life I would find on this world. From the images, the forest around the ship looked pretty normal, a lot like one that might be seen on Earth, so I was curious about whether or not I’d find life that was similar to Earth as well. It was conceivable that this might be another “human” origin world, there were already four that I could think of so it wouldn’t surprise me any to find another.
I started to feel an odd pressure in my lower stomach region that felt really familiar. Once again it was something I had never felt before in game but I knew what this feeling was. Paling immediately I jumped up and letting my tools fall to the ground, I rushed through the halls of the ship to my room and the now critically vital bathroom.
A few minutes later and I felt like I was going to cry. I had just used the toilet, as a girl.
What the fuck were those developers thinking to put in even this!? Everything that’s happened to me today almost feels like a concentrated effort to bully me. What did I do to deserve all this!? I’m absolutely, absolutely sending in a very harsh complaint once I log out.
A frightening thought had just occurred to me. What do I do if they even added in periods!?
A concerned voice was heard on the other side of the bathroom door “Mistress, you’re not still feeling sick are you? I wanted to let you know that I finished the survey and even managed to land the drone roughly twenty-five kilometers away.”
Looking at my face in the mirror that displayed an expression that could only be described as traumatized. I really didn’t want to face Lynn or anyone right now. I took a deep breath before responding. “Lynn, can you go install the new cores for the maintenance droids. The synthesizer should have completed producing them by now.”
The still concerned voice replied, “I can do that, but Mistress are you sure you’re okay? I can go get you more medicine.”
“I’m not feeling sick Lynn, I just need some alone time right now.” Yeah, I just need to contemplate my now battered self-image.
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For the curious, if you want to know what Seri’s clothing looks like. Shamelessly stolen from PSO2.
Her flight suit similar to this but different color
The pajamas Lynn put her in minus the stuffed animal, twin tails were included