As he examined the probe, he glanced at the nearby techs. "Alright. Which of you is the best with Faster-than-Light drives? I want to know how little of this probe I can keep and it still launch successfully. As well, of course, as how it works."

The four looked at each other; and the green-skinned one stepped forward, looking at the floor as he approached. "Sir. I am Tier-Two Drive tech Lert. I can build one, take it apart, put it back together... whatever you need. These probes are mostly sensor and drive packages. How big is the package?"

Jason reached into the duffel bag and pulled out the prototype; what seemed to be a simple metal disk, containing a busily running fabricator, about half a meter across and a few centimeters thick. "Just this. But we want to shield it properly. However much copper wire and silicon we can pack in around it. More is better."

Lert blinked. "Copper and silicon... shielding? What exactly are you shielding? We have a variety of.."

Jason raised a hand, and looked at the trio of Marrick. "I want as much copper wire and silicon tubing as you can fit wrapped around this. Disassemble the sensor packages, leave the engine, and the transmitter. We want it to be able to come back to us, and tell it where it is. Otherwise, it just needs to get there, carrying this. Also... the prototype is delicate. I fully expect it to fail, and us to need to make a second attempt; but the first one should tell us what we need to know to keep the second one safe... if such a thing is possible. So once you get the first one broken down, go ahead and start on a second."

He glanced back to Lert. "Now. This FTL drive. How does it work? Start with the basic overview. We'll get technical later."

All four eyes blinked as the creature watched his fellow engineers start taking apart the probe; and turned to Jason. "Well. It creates a gravitic resonance field which stretches space-time, and makes the area the ship is in bigger compared to the space outside it. If you look at a ship using a drive, it seems bigger than it really is; and the people on the ship would see the galaxy itself as smaller. Here, let me get you a display."

Lert guided Jason away from the probes, to a console; tapping a few buttons, showing a diagram of... a cloud. A small bullet-like projectile appeared; and slowly moved through it, forming a narrow path. A second bullet then appeared; and moved much faster, making a much wider path; before shrinking back to its original size. "The more the drive stretches space, the faster you go... and the more vulnerable you are. Hitting a rock at normal speeds is bad, but survivable. Even with shields on, hitting a rock in FTL..."

He showed another projection; this time of the scout ship itself; at two different sizes. "If a pebble slams into the 8AD, in normal space, with no shields? It splatters, and dents the hull." A rock was shown fragmenting against the smaller ship. "And in FTL, even with shields on..." A much smaller pebble slammed into the ship; and penetrated like a needle, emerging from the other side, leaving clouds of escaping atmosphere on each end.

"So. It can go fast... really, really fast... but the faster it goes, the more risky. Most ships use routes that have been cleared out by special field emitter ships, traveling at lightspeed along the pathways, letting them go as fast as they want with minimal risk. We could get to the Capital in a few days, by following cleared routes, and hopping a ride through a gate... while heading into Swarm territory, which is actually closer... would take weeks, since we'd be traveling at less than a tenth the speed."

He shut off the display. "We usually call them twist drives, because they twist space."

Jason nodded slightly. "Mute. Translator, rename them Warp drives for me for future interactions."

Lert stared at Jason for a moment; then at the probe. "So... how have you never heard of a Warp drive? They aren't the only drive people use... but everyone has them. The founders built them millions of years ago, and so many other species have copied them for their own purposes."

"Extragalactic. Not from around here. We use a different sort of FTL-drive. Relies on extradimensional travel." He looked around at the other cylinders where they were mounted in the magazines. "I'm assuming some of these are missiles? Can you give me a good idea of how this thing is armed?"

"Oh! Of course." The alien seemed... amazed. Shocked... but he walked up to one of the seemingly inert metal tubes, and gently placed a hand on it. "This is a decoy missile. Just as fast as the others, but has hundreds of tiny drones that fly around and attract attention."

He steps around the launch tube, and taps a seemingly identical cylinder; Jason could see the script was different, but it looked just like the probes, and the other missiles; two meters long, one meter thick. Just... a solid bullet-like slug. "These are our ship-killers. Plasma torpedoes. Detonate right at the edge of point-defense range, and fire a cloud of superheated energetic plasma at the target. Melt armor into slag, making holes too big for auto-repair to handle."

He kept walking along... and this final one actually seemed different. The base was round; but above it were a series of rods, all bound together by a circular metal framework. "And... our defense missiles, or anti-fighter. Each of those rods fragments, turning into shards of a variety of materials, scattering through space."

He turned back to Jason. "Between these, our Pulsewave Cannon, and our usual particle cannon turrets, scout ships are unusually heavily armed."

"Particle cannons I get. Fire tiny amounts of mass at a high fraction of lightspeed. Point defense and close-in anti-ship?"

"Exactly. Scoutships like the 8AD are built to handle groups of weaker enemies, or distract stronger ones long enough to escape. The Pulsewave Cannon is a bit more unique, only on ships meant to operate alone, and is most of our firepower. It's essentially weaponized chaos."

Jason looked over the missiles, counting them out. This bay held at least forty missiles; but he'd need to get closer to check how many of each type. And of course, some of them were probes. "Weaponized chaos?"

"It shoots out these waves in every direction... and random arcs of energy scatter along them. I've seen them fired... like beautiful ribbons of white light that strike and pierce things nearby. Can't be aimed. Can't be controlled. Useless for a fleet. Amazing for a solo vessel. There's four classes of ships that carry them, and each of them is worth three or four times its mass in enemy ships... or quite a bit more for smaller, lighter enemies. One shot of the Pulsewave Cannon might take out hundreds of corvettes or fighters.""

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Jason studied the ship, looking over it in every direction. Nice. It would make a good start. Whatever the biggest of those four classes would be, that'd be his real ship when he went to work, but this scout would do in a pinch. Just need some upgrades. "Not bad. My old ship would have crushed her, but that wouldn't be a fair comparison. Her hull was pseudo-neutronium. Lets get started on the probe."

***

Jason smiled at what seemed like a ball of copper-colored yarn wedged tightly into the space of the probe, as it was sealed up... and loaded into the launch tube. It was just about ready to fire, and he already had the next pocket dimension started up... but this one... would be key to his plans.

The giant mass of silicon and copper wrapped around the portal was an amusing trick; this was just raw materials for the fabricator, hidden inside the extradimensional space. If he managed things right, he could hit some nickel-iron rock out there, and the fabricator could start making all sorts of useful things... and then, given time, take over whatever ship picked it up. Hopefully this one.

"Alright folks, we're ready for launch. We're going to want it to enter warp a few seconds after launch, a fair distance off, and come out near a good landmark; but not anything important. We got a local map on here?"

Lert had increasingly become his go-to for the engineering team; while Charis was mostly leaning back against the wall, looking nervous. She had no idea what was going on, and this was vastly different from what she'd signed up for. She perked up at the idea of actually contributing something useful; and stepped over to a terminal as Lert made minor adjustments to the probe's thruster. "Oh, that's easy enough! Here... I can show you the local sensor net results."

A map of the star system appeared. A single sun. Four gas giants. An enormous ring of debris, scattered around the system.... and tens of thousands of dots depicting starships. Space stations. On the screen, an icon appeared for the 8AD, with a label, and Jason stopped, staring at the icon for a moment. "....Mute. Ascension, did you deliberately name this thing 'Bad' in leet-speak?"

~Marrick alphabets have 35 letters, though what those letter are vary slightly from one sub-race to another; For translation purposes, I've designated them as A through Z, with the following nine letters as one through nine. If I simply used it as a string of numbers, it would be Thirty-four, One, Four.~

"... Still not buying it Unmute. Alright, Charis. Do you know much about this system layout?"

She looked over the map. "Well. Most of the system lives around this second gas giant here, we call it the Golden Orb... over the millenia, four of its moons have been slowly developed from miserable hellholes into the beautiful places they are today, the Golden Worlds. All of the non gas-giant planets were eventually shredded to make this giant ring of debris... and we've been mining them since we found it, piece by piece."

"Fine, fine. I want a patch that doesn't have anyone or anything valuable. We're going to launch a possibly destructive probe. I want some object for a backstop; but preferably a useless chunk of nickel-iron rather than anything someone cares about."

Charis looked in closer, frowning. "Well. Just a second." She made a few delicate gestures. "Okay. So.... these are the different claims of the mining companies in the system. Anything outside them is free game, so..." A giant swath of the debris field was highlighted in red; with numerous green dots scattered outside. "If it's in green, nobody cares about it; and every rock in the system has been catalogued if its bigger than a few meters across, so..."

"Excellent. What's the biggest rock nobody cares about?"

She made a few more gestures. Suddenly only four dots appeared. "Here we go. Four random rocks... each with the same mass estimate. None with even a trace of anything valuable. Carbon, hydrogen, iron, nickel."

Jason looked in closely, studying the shape and scans of the rocks... his helmet highlighted the third one. ~This rock would be optimal.~ Jason frowned... he just... felt better about the first one. "Mute. I think my powers want me to go with the first one. Any solid reasons for number three?" ~Negative, it simply seemed the best of the three candidates.~

He tapped the first image. "We'll do this one. If you could pass the information on to the captain. We should start heading that way, as well. Slower-than-light, definitely, for now." He glanced around... and looked at Lert. "Lert, could you get me a channel to the Captain?"

He blinked; the single row of four eyes looking distinctively odd once again; and nodded. "Of course. The probe is ready. Can launch any time."

"Load it up. Aim for this rock... and get me that channel."

Lert glanced at Jason for a moment. "Do you... have a standard comm unit in that helmet? I would just be using the one in my suit, which would identify me as the sender."

"... Go ahead and call him, then, I'll use your channel for now. We'll figure out better comms later. And send the location of this rock to the bridge."

The greenskin looked a bit uncomfortable as he tapped his wrist... and a sudden angry voice emerged. "What is it!? You should be having your superior contact me rather than doing this yourself, sub-engineer!"

"Ahh... sir, the visitor asked me to call you. He doesn't have one of our comms, and has a request."

"Oh." A moment of silence on the line. "Jason, can you hear me?"

Jason glanced at the closest alien. Of course. A tier one or zero captain, talking to a tier two engineer. "Loud and clear, captain. We're going to be launching the probe shortly; in case it breaks, I'd like to retrieve the remains, so I'll be launching the probe at a target. It should stop before impact; but if something goes wrong, we can pull it from the debris. Would you might setting a course for a specific rock for me, and taking it slow getting there?"

"Of course. We'll set course there now. And just how slow?"

Jason studied the system map. This place was... on the outer edge of the system. Perhaps six light-hours away. "I'm not sure how fast you can get her up to, but if we stayed the same speed the whole time, no less than a forty-hour trip."

The silence continued for at least thirty seconds.. before the captain came back on the line. "That works for us. We'd normally get to the closest travel lane and use a quick warp-drive hop for something this far. We couldn't make it there any faster than, at best, thirty hours without doing so, and that would be a bit dangerous. You may launch when ready; we'll set our course once you have."

Jason smiled; and turned to Lert. "There we go. Go ahead and launch for the target; we want it to enter warp, reach the target asteroid, and stop nearby. If it doesn't run into any problems, we want it to jump back.... here." He taps another spot on the map. "As far from any objects as possible, just a few light-minutes away."

"Perfect. Exactly what these probes are built for, shouldn't be a problem."

The crew used a nearby crane-like piece of equipment that wrapped the test probe in a set of tendrils, and loaded it onto the barrel; the probe wasn't on the same belt-driven ammo loader as the rest of the missiles. The tube sealed... and after a few seconds, the whole ship shook for a few moments... and a tiny yellow light appeared on the map.

One moment, it was beside the ship, hurtling away at speed, launched by a magnetic rail. The next... it was gone.

It vanished... and reappeared on the sensor net out by the rock; though it appeared to, rather than stopping nearby, and returning, actually strike the rock. ~Launch a success. An accidental impact has been faked. It's going to dig into the rock and use it's raw material to make components until we arrive. So long as it takes at least forty hours to get there, everything we need to hijack the 8AD will be waiting for us.~

Jason stared at the display, pretending not to have received that message, to be seeing something the others could not. "Hmm. Looks like the warp drive didn't cause any problems, but something else did. I've already got a second device partially complete. I've got good readings up until the moment it hit the asteroid, so I'll make some adjustments before the second attempt."

He glanced at Lert, and smiled. "I'd like to investigate the impact site in person once we arrive. Do you have any spare armor onboard that I could get customized to fit? My anatomy is just different enough from a Merrick to make one uncomfortable. And I'd prefer black, over teal, if possible."