The transition through Exospace was silent as was the transition back into Material Space. The sound of alarms blaring was not unexpected but was jarring, nonetheless. Mira launched into action, her hands dancing across controls as she tried to understand their situation.
Her cursing did not help the others achieve any sense of calm, not that the alarms would have allowed it. Duke looked over to Aurelia, neither of them able to actually do anything with the ship. Lya worked the communications console slowly, adjusting controls that were a mystery to Duke. The three orcs remained in their seats, a look of calm resignation on their faces.
Finally, the main viewscreen snapped on showing a distinct image. It was a line of light. On one side of the line was a black void and the other side was brimming with brightly glowing objects. It was mesmerizing and surreal.
“Is that the edge of the world?” Aurelia asked.
Mira responded, her voice gripped with tension, “You could think of it that way, but it’s the event horizon of a supermassive black hole. We’re in the accretion disk of the thing and the gravity well is pulling us in.”
“Is that all?” Tukka asked.
Mira glared at him as she finally silenced the alarms. “The gravity exceeds the thrust rating of our engines, so, yeah, that’s a problem.”
“How long until we get pulled in?” Duke asked.
Mira shrugged. “No way to answer that. Too many conflicting theories. But I’ll answer the question you really wanted to ask. We have about forty days to figure out a way out of here before we are pulled too close to the event horizon and reality completely breaks down for us.”
“That seems like a long time,” Aurelia said.
“Every day, really every second, we are getting pulled closer and the closer we get, the more the pull increases. Our engines already are straining to keep us from being pulled in faster, but they are not enough to even keep us at the same relative distance.” She looked at Duke meaningfully. He understood her request.
Duke nodded. The time for secrecy, at least for this one case, had passed. He shook his head resignedly and started working with the navigational console. He was interrupted by a system message.
*** You have successfully absorbed a new magical effect. The stunning shots you have received have been converted into a new Ability. DEVOLUTION will allow you to decrease the effective physical Characteristics of your target. This is a touch-ranged attack at its current rank of Untrained 9. The effects of this Ability can be resisted by someone with a comparably higher Psyche than you and will last for a duration dependent on rank and level of the Ability. ***
Duke could finally feel the stun rods’ effects slip away. Those lasted a long time. I wonder what the actual duration of them are. Could the effects have been otherwise permanent? If that’s the case, that’s a really nasty device. I should have grabbed one – I bet Baslin would have loved to study it. Oh well, time to find a TELEPORT target for the ship.
Duke also noted that he had received a paltry 600 experience for beating the Syndicate troops. He shrugged, agreeing that they were no challenge beyond their unique weaponry. If he had been using his Abilities, they wouldn’t have lasted past the initial strike. As it was, he merely left them beaten and broken as he was reasonably sure he hadn’t killed any of them.
He poured over the star charts of their location and quickly became confused. None of the charts matched up to anything he could find. “Hey, Mira, can you come over here for a minute?” He asked.
She sauntered over calmly. Despite their situation, she had seen what Duke’s Ability was capable of and was not concerned for their safety. They still had plenty of time before things got dicey even with the ship’s Mana reserves down to 42%. With full confidence, she approached the navigation console and pulled up the alternate chair to sit upon.
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“First off, where did that chair com from?” Duke asked.
“I just pulled up the alternate chair. All the stations save the Captain’s chair have one. But that’s not what you called me over for. What’s on your mind?”
“I can’t find our location.”
Mira peered at the console data and her brow furrowed. After several long minutes of adjustments and study she sat back with a contemplative look on her face. “This is quite odd, for sure. The gravity well of the black hole is distorting everything the sensors are pulling in, so nothing is lining up. I don’t have any tech on the ship that can account for this. Actually, I don’t know if there is any tech that can account for this. I hate to say it, but we’re going to have to do this blind. Again.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Anything else we need to prep before we do this?”
“Mana reserves are low again.”
“Did the jump take that much out of the ship?”
“It wasn’t the jump. It was the hit to the shields as we jumped. A few tenths of a second more and the shields would have completely failed.”
“Cut it a bit close then wouldn’t you say?”
“Just a bit. Now, go recharge us and get us out of here.”
Duke left the bridge without another word, heading down to the Mana cores. He spent the next several minutes filling them back up. As he did so, he examined them very closely, using every sense he had available to himself. He was determined to figure out just how these cores were created and what made them so special. He poured all his focus and attention into the intricacies of the flow of Mana within the cores, how the structure swirled inwards, how the crystals aligned and formed the overall structure.
“Duke? Are you alright?” He was startled out of his thoughts by a voice in his ear and a hand on his shoulder.
“Yes, Aurelia, I’m fine.”
“You’ve been standing there staring at the wall for over an hour.”
“I’ve been what?”
“You heard me, love. You haven’t moved from that spot in over an hour. Mira sent me down to check on you.”
“I’m fine, really. I think I have figured these Mana cores out.”
“What do you mean?”
“They seem to be at the core, joke intended, of all the magitech. They store and regulate the Mana that everything uses from this ship to the mechs to even the sidearms that everyone seems to be carrying around. Have to get myself one of those, by the way. You as well. If we are going to be galivanting around the universe as space rogues, we should look the part, right?”
“I suppose, but I much rather prefer my sword.”
“I know, I know. But anyway, these cores are not nearly as complex as everyone thinks they are. Don’t get me wrong, they are complex structures, but these cores,” Duke gestured over to the bank of cores, “are horribly flawed. They are, in essence, highly flawed dungeon cores without any sentience built into them. I could make better cores than these in a matter of seconds.”
Duke activated his DUNGEON CORE CREATION Ability and carefully manipulated the core he was creating to make it flawless but non-viable as a dungeon core. He stripped the design of any sentience and proceeded to rapidly fill it with Mana. By his calculations, it would hold nearly 10 million Mana. A few seconds later, the core was filled up and Duke replaced one of the standard cores with the new one.
Immediately, there was a surge of energy throughout the ship. The intercom next to Duke rang out, “What the hell was that? What did you do, Duke?”
“How do you know it was me?”
“You’re really going to ask that? Now, tell me what you did!”
“I upgraded one of the Mana cores.”
“Is that why I just got a nearly 40% boost in the ship’s Mana capacity?”
“Must be. I can upgrade the others if you like.”
“Let’s just do one at a time for now. I don’t see any ill effects but let’s not be too hasty.”
“Roger that. I’ll go slow. I need to regen my Mana anyway. What the hell?” Duke paused looking at his character sheet. His Mana was far lower than it should be. His regen rate was more than five hundred thousand a second. He had spent about fifteen million Mana crating and charging the core. That should have only taken about thirty seconds to fully recharge his Mana pool. “Mira, I think there’s a problem. I’m coming up to the bridge.”
Everyone was waiting for him when Duke entered. Mira did not give him time to speak before nearly leaping at him, “What’s wrong with the ship?”
“Oh, sorry, it’s not the ship. There’s nothing wrong with the ship as far as I know. Except for the whole ‘waiting to be sucked into a black hole’ thing. No, the problem is my Mana regen. It’s like 40% of what it should be. Is anyone else having similar problems?”
Duke’s SENSE MAGIC picked up on everyone using their magical Spells or Abilities. It was entertaining to watch but he was more interested in finding out if their Mana regens were similarly affected. It did not take long before everyone chimed in. The regen rates were anywhere between 10 and 30%.
“Why the variance?” Mira asked. “And why the reduced regen in the first place?”
“It could be the black hole,” Lya suggested. “Everything gets weird around them.”
“Then all the more reason to find a way out of here,” said Gro’nok.
Duke looked to Mira who responded, “If you can upgrade the rest of the cores, we might have enough power to push ourselves out of this gravity well.”
“Give me an hour or three. I’ll go slowly to make sure nothing gets overloaded with the additional power.”
“Makes sense. We’ll all be up here waiting for you,” Mira said as Duke headed down to work on the ships Mana cores.