Congratulations. You gained access to the ?. You receive: 50 XP.
Type Description Difficulty Reward
Chain
Explore the wreck before the vortex reaches you.
Average
250 XP
"Hey, it’s a new part of the chain. It has been upgraded to silver rank." "What is the next step?" "Just exploring the ship. But we need to get it done before the vortex reaches us." "That seems possible."
Once the drone was done with its morbid task of collecting the dead, he sent it deeper into the wreck. Nloquia warned him "You should use a fiberoptic cable if you want to keep in contact with the drone. The ship’s frame will degrade the signal further." Malik fetched back one of the other drones and ordered it to act as a kind of relay, spooling out kilometers of the thin cable. His luck held and the 'friendly' drone was able to pull the cable through the force field. Back at the wreck, the machine continued its inspection. The first thing Malik wanted to find was the power source. If he managed to get it out of there in one piece, it would be worth a small fortune.
The drone encountered more and more corpses, and Malik was getting impatient. "How many more of them are there? We must be close to a hundred dead. Just getting them all out will take a day. What kind of warship carries so much crew?" "Perhaps it is something else? A colony ship?" He thought about the AI’s suggestion, but it seemed implausible. "No, they would need far more cargo capacity - a ship like this cannot create a new space station or settle folks on a planet. Perhaps a pleasure cruiser or a scientific venture? Although the former would be rather unlikely to travel in a place where so many military ships converge."
The middle decks contained a lot of crew quarters - none looked particularly luxurious. On other wrecks, Malik would have moved the drone from one room to the next, methodically exploring the whole ship deck by deck. But when he looked at Nloquias projection about the time until the vortex was coming, he abandoned the slow approach and went for 'loot first, analyse later'. Which translated into 'move the drone into a room, grab an interesting looking box, move it to the hangar and return 10 minutes later'. Luckily Nloquia was able to take over the routine movements of the drone, so he could concentrate on transforming the other two drones to generate a similar 'helpful' energy signature. A day later, they successfully went through the shield barrier, too - and he promptly assigned them the low level salvage operations.
Unfortunately he needed to personally review the footage sent from the drones, since the AI was a lot worse than his [Appraisal] skill when it came to figure out if carrying something back to the hangar was worthwhile. Still, Nloquia helped a lot to simplify redundant runs. "Those glass containers with the blue glowing liquid, I want them all." "Acknowledged - it will take about 6 hours to transfer them to our cargo hold." "Okay." After appraising hundreds of new items at least superficially, his [Appraisal] skill even leveled up to 8.
To his surprise, the wreck’s mundane systems were still partially powered, like the door mechanisms which could be ordered to open despite the emergency shutdown that seemed to have triggered once the ship was severely damaged and losing atmosphere. This was made easier by the fact that the ship’s technology was in part almost identical to the UHI (Universal Human Interface) used throughout the human part of the galaxy. "We’re lucky they are not a slime based life form, or we would need to break all the doors." Malik thought. A shudder passed through him - he felt he had jinxed the whole operation. And for sure, their luck only held until they arrived at the entrance to the machine deck.
Nloquia: "The machine deck is locked, and the opening mechanism has been fused together - seems like part of an emergency shutdown. I advise the use of our heavy-duty plasma cutters." "Damn. We only have three charges for those. I meant to buy more, but Oddwise rarely has some in our budget level lying around… okay, let’s do it." It took almost half another day to configure the drones with the plasma cutters since Malik had bought human usable stock instead of drone-ready cutters. He even leveled up his [Drone Reconfiguration] skill. Finally he was done, and the machines got to work. Meanwhile, the rest of the ship had been stripped as far as he and the AI controlled drones could manage - which meant leaving over 90% of all salvageable goods still onboard the wreck.
The vortex drew near, and Malik was tempted to simply grab some more stuff from the crew quarters or blast open some personal safes belonging to higher placed officers. But he wanted to get at least a look at what was powering the wreck - an engine capable of surviving the cataclysm was a price he could not simply leave be. When the drone finally opened the door the machine deck, he held his breath. This was it. The moment of truth - would he strike it rich?
The sound of a bell interrupted his further exploration of the wreck. "What is it?" he asked angrily, frustrated by an unnecessary interruption. "A subspace call from Alissa MacSörren. If you wish, I can tell her you are busy." Alissa was his ex-wife’s younger sister and his part-time mechanic whenever the Seeker was at port. "Oh well. Put her on the screen - she won’t quit nagging otherwise."
The annoyed face of the wiry young woman with the short-cropped blonde hair filled the screen. Alissa was on the war path. "Malik! What are you doing? Why don’t you call? Lei-lah and Neki are worried sick about you." "They did not call. I doubt they miss me already." he said defensively. "Are you kidding me? Your daughter has been glued to the far scanner, putting endless calculation directives into the pod’s AI to determine how long you have before the vortex kills you. She exhausted her mother’s monthly computation budget within two days!" Malik winced. Lei-lah was always chafing at the restrictions placed on her computation matrix by the space station’s owners. As a scientist, she already got far more budget than other civilians, but it was never enough. And Neki was following in her steps…
He sighed. "Relax. I got it under control, we still got … " "3.14159 days " "3 days left, thank you, Nloquia. See, there is nothing to worry about." Alissa’s face paled. "Oh my god, you don’t even know… " "What’s there to know? It’s a pile of space debris with a rather obvious and easily calculated course." "It’s hot! Malik you idiot, it’s hot! You got 6 hours at max!" Malik gulped "Nloquia, is this true?" "I am sorry, Malik, but the Seeker’s sensors are not capable of determining this since last month’s particle storm." He looked at the second screen. A hot vortex meant several clustered wrecks inside had active weapon systems. A normal vortex was a bad enough occurrence if he happened to encounter it while scavenging, but manageable if he was careful enough to check with an expendable sensor drone beforehand. A hot vortex … the sheer mass of hundreds or thousands of ships made it impossible to calculate the danger zone. Whatever drew the alien civilizations to this system, they arrived with powerful weapons. Mostly broken, but often enough still active and deadly.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"And it’s uniform." he whispered. A tiny factoid that probably mattered to no one since the vortex was still deep enough in the system to pose no danger to the more powerful disassembler platforms and large salvage companies waiting in the outer parts. "What? Oh Malik, that is even worse… I’m so sorry." "I know." Even partially wrecked by the cataclysm, a whole fleet of ships with coordinated automated weapon systems posed a far worse danger than a cluster of mixed ships. The latter would at least spend their ammunition on each other. A uniform fleet would turn its sensors outward and try to eliminate any perceived threats it encountered by using overwhelming force. Few uniform fleets had been seen, and each had taken a squadron of battle cruisers to destroy it.
"But why didn’t we get a star system-wide update?" he wondered. Alissa frowned "Someone has been messing with the emergency news feed system. There was some political bullshit about the outer sensor platforms only giving out their info packets as navigational DLCs. You’re lucky your daughter convinced Lei-lah that this is important. Now get the hell out of there!" she shouted and cut the connection.
"Nloquia, how long do we have?" "I estimate about 2.502 hours until we are in reach of their weapon systems. If we are unlucky, we already are inside torpedo range. The fleet seems to consist of ships of a style similar to our wreck here."
And just as he thought it could not get worse than a fleet of alien warships, a new quest update popped up before him.
Congratulations. Your drones have explored 95% of all relevant rooms of this wreck. You receive: 250 XP.
Type Description Difficulty Reward
Epic Survival
Survive your encounter with the Vortex!
Deadly
10.000 XP, Title, your life
"Oh, the System has raised the stakes." He smiled weakly. "It’s just gave me an epic survival quest to make it out alive." "The chance of successful completion of this kind of quests is about 2.51%. Less than 1% if success means surviving unharmed." "I know. And the chain quest has also updated. But to use the energy core, I would have to spend more time with the wreck, which I do not think will let me survive the epic quest."
Malik sighed. Then he decided to give it at least a try. He looked at the drone’s video feed as it hovered in the entrance to the machine room. He saw four more dead people standing in their space suits around a shiny metallic cube.
Type Level Status Value
Loperian Powercube [Quest Item]
?
slightly damaged
?
"Oh, my appraisal has given me a name: it’s a Loperian Powercube." "… There is nothing about a race or factory by that name in the databases. Should I send a request to the central archives?" "No, better not - those are logged, and we do not need this kind of attention right now." "Understood."
For a moment he wondered why the alien engineers were not floating around, but then he recognized the distinct lights on their boots: the whole room still had power and their magnetic boots had not switched off when they died by passing through the cataclysm’s wormhole.
The cube had some kind of blinking terminal. The drone would have no problem transporting this object, as the side length was only a little over 1m. But then he saw the heavy-duty screws on the bottom of each side - it would take some time to get the cube free. And that was without taking into account the cabling that was surely hidden beneath the power source. But there was nothing left but trying at least once before he had to flee the approaching vortex.
Malik ordered the drone to unscrew the cube. He was lucky the wreck used a screw type the drone could handle without risking to make them unusable. But just as he had guessed, beneath the cube were multiple thick cables and no clear sign of how or in which order to detach them. Just ripping the cube free could cause tremendous damage - or make the ship explode, depending on what was going on inside the power core. Perhaps one of the cables was some kind of fuel line? Better not cutting through there without examining it some more.
Just as he steered the drone’s camera arm near the cube’s bottom, Nloquia interrupted him. "We are scanned by a powerful sensor array. Probable purpose: they are targeting us." "You said we would have 2 hours before they come in range." "I am sorry, Malik, but my estimates of unknown space weapon systems capabilities come with a larger chance or erroneous calculations." "Shit!"
Malik took a look at the vortex: two ships were running in the front of the whole fleet, and they were near enough that Nloquia had acquired a first raw image of them. The shapes were ominous, bristling with what appeared to be weapon systems - laser turrets and railgun towers. He shivered at the thought what else those frigate class ships would be carrying. Then, as if fate had listened to his inner fears, he saw an exhaust plume from both ships as they fired something more substantial than a sensor beam at the Seeker.
Nloquia: "Torpedo-like devices are approaching at high speed. Estimated time of impact … less than 30 minutes. They are accelerating. Re-calculating: 15 minutes." Malik cursed. "We cannot outrun those, can we?" He looked at the torpedoes. "[Appraise]"
Type Level Status Estimated damage
Weapon: Loperian Torpedo
20
active, 95% structural integrity
vs. Seeker: annihilation
"There goes the hope they are defective and will explode before they reach us. Against one, we may have a one-in-twenty chance it breaks up, but there are two coming, and they may have more. Target them with the asteroid laser." Going after the torpedoes with the Seeker’s only weapon system was a huge gamble, but perhaps they would get lucky. But he did not need Nloquia to analyze the situation further, this was going to get ugly. The asteroid laser was a simple turret, designed to vaporized small pieces of space junk. It was fast with a mediocre rate of fire, but against the hardened structure of an advanced weapon system it was like throwing rocks at a battle mech.
Malik found his heart beating faster as his mind descended into sheer panic. This was the end - no escape, no chance, just because his greed had got the better of him - and the blocked system-wide message about the active vortex had negated any chance he might have had to recognize the growing danger.