The ship came from everywhere, its materials sourced from Earth, Nauvis, The Range, The depths of space, or simply synthesized from nothing. Gathered from slimes, or harvested from fish or bug, exotic energies gathered and infused. The materials refined to perfection, alloys crafted and made for each specific piece. With durability, thermal and electrical conductivity, elasticity, and even reflectiveness carefully optimized. The most common upgrade a machine got was when a better alloy was found for a specific purpose. Every part purposefully designed and crafted, down to the smallest bolt or wire.
And then those parts were brought together, through a factory wide network of drones, belts and machines. Piece meeting and combining slowly, larger and larger wholes getting nearer to each other following a carefully laid out choreography, smaller puzzle pieces forming together into ever larger puzzles. Laser turrets assembled from circuits, focusing lenses, capacitors, and dozens of other complex parts only to be taken and combined with the dozens of other weapons and systems upon the ship.
But that was how everything in the factory was made, and aside from scale this was nothing special, not yet. The design being custom made and the ship itself not having a dedicated production line? That was a significantly larger oddity, especially given the ship was planned to be used, rather than sitting in an underground with dozens of other prototype vehicles.
No, none of those things made the ship special. But the golden item slowly being formed within a tier four assembler with the engineer helping to form it? That was what would make this ship special. Mass produced items had their place, they could be overwhelmingly powerful both in numbers and in individual strength. But sometimes you just need to make a point.
One of the Makers warships could be destroyed, they were smaller than their contemporaries, slower, lacking in systems that had been designed and improved upon over centuries. They had brute power and unbelievable durability, Advanced targeting systems and powerful weapons, but if one knew how to fight them they could be beaten.
It wouldn't even take much, just a faster fleet to whittle it down while having systems hardened against AI intrusion. They weren't optimized, nor had they been tested against equals.
But they would serve, and if ever one was broken? If a ship ever fell? This would be the answer, a statement of intent. That you can beat the weakest of the fighting ships, then you must be worth the effort of a true warship.
Three kilometers of ship, not made to patrol or defend territory as the original warships had been. No, this ship was made to hunt down and destroy other ships, it was faster, its weapons had greater range and power, its shields excessive and its armor plating thick enough it could shrug off plasma and shells at five percent light speed even without shields.
That alone would make it an excellent flagship, capable of winning any fight it got into, and durable enough to escape if ever it needed too.
But that alone wouldn't have been excessive. And what good was a statement without overstating the point?
Deep in the heart of the ship, where one imagined a reactor or command center should sit dwelt a core. It did not provide power in the traditional sense, it did not cloak the ship in potent energies to ward attacks, it did not generate magics to hasten flight or hide the ship from sight and sensor, nor did it bend probability or space or gravity or any of the potent sources an artifact such as it could have done.
That would have been too subtle.
Crafted solely from plort and plort derived essences, lacking even the basest materials from another source, the core had formed under the combined weight of the Maker himself and a significantly upgraded tier four assembler. It had taken two days and thousands of plorts, before even the basic frame of the core had been complete.
Then the golden plorts, gathered with significant effort from uncooperative slimes, were gathered the sheer amount of the golden substance capable of being felt even when one wasn't actively looking at it, distant sounds of glittering gold and sparkling metals could be heard echoing throughout the entirety of the underfactory as enough power to supply an entire system was routed into the fabricator, the wires and projectors beginning to heat under the strain, kept intact by shields and the Makers presence, maintained by a watchful fleet of drones ever ready to replace parts as they began to weaken from the strain.
The plorts melted into a puddle, essence from every other slime known was slowly dripped into the mixture which began to glow brighter as iridescent tar like lines the essences had become began to sizzle and merge with the golden substance causing the gold itself to shift colors, white to pink to yellow to rose to every shade and quality of gold there was patterns forming within the shifting colors that the brain refused to acknowledge as existing and would only remember long after one had looked away from the mesmerizing fluid.
Once it was ready and no part of the gold remained unchanging the projectors guided it within the hollow core, circuits, capacitors, wires, lights, everything one would expect to be within any random contraption formed, and though they were made from plort and should realistically never work, the core seemed to shudder and light up as the projectors slowly shut off.
Then the core was grabbed by a pair of logistics drones, guarded by a squad of destroyer drones, and taken through the logistics network to its safe housing within its ship.
It was set within, and then the ship was complete, a pulse of power from the core finalizing that truth.
The core was what made the ship special, the basic frame could be mass produced, and likely would be, but they would lack this one feature. The ship was designed with this in mind, its hull colored gold, it's entirely decorative windows being made from gems, diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Amber. It looked as if one had dumped out a treasure chest and turned it into a ship, gaudy beyond belief. One couldn't look at it without the sheer concept of 'too much money' forcing itself into their mind.
One might wonder what the core did to be worth this effort, and that was simple. It made the ship indestructible, uncatchable, and excessively shiny. As long as a golden plort was within the core the ship simply couldn't be broken, caught, or even ignored. One look at it and you would be compelled to fight, destroy, capture, or pillage the ship, and as long as a plort remained you wouldn't be able to. No boarding pods could land even if they could somehow breach the more mundane shield systems, No relay could deny it access, nor would physical barriers slow it. Simply phasing through what it could not avoid.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Weapon systems could be overcharged, reactors overheated, shields powered to the point where they should have burnt out, thrusters fired until they should have melted, stresses placed that should break every system could and would be placed upon them because the systems couldn't break. Even processing systems couldn't be overstrained, it was the complete removal of any and all limits.
There was also the fact that quantum plort duplication might not cause the ship to blow up if it started and ended while the golden aura was activated. Not something I would be testing, but the ship had the ability to duplicate itself like all my unmanned warships, even if this one would be manned. If you can beat one, try fighting two or three.
But it took golden plorts to do it, every ten minutes the socketed plort would be consumed to fuel the transformation. And golden plorts were in short supply, only two remaining after the crafting of the core itself.
The ship could only reach those sought after heights for twenty minutes, but that was a simple logistics and supply issue and what kind of factory couldn't work around those? Just needed to get that mythical vegetable and capture a golden gordo, definitely wouldn't slowly go insane trying.
-------------------
Aurora strode through the halls of the newly constructed ship, her new ship. When she'd heard the rumors that the Maker himself was building a new navy, one for the stars themselves, she'd never even dreamed that she'd be chosen to captain one of the ships. And it wasn't just one of the ships, it was the ship, the biggest one yet, the flagship.
Her new outfit reflected her role, her old and worn tricorn hat and surcoat had been replaced, with an outfit designed by a mind itself. The fabric was heavy and smooth, and she knew it would keep her safe even if she hadn't been able to feel the power pulsing off it. Her sword and flintlock had been replaced as well, with one of the Makers shield rapiers and a plasma blunderbuss.
That the ship had gold halls and was covered in gems was only the icing on the cake, she'd had treasure before, and had considered her small patrol boat one of her treasures, but never before had it been so Literal.
But the Steadfast Recompense wasn't just a treasure because of its looks, though that played a large part. It was a technological wonder, and while she wasn't a technician she knew ships. Eight one hundred meter ships were attached to its hull to provide point defense, more fighters, and an over abundance of missiles. Each one of the eight ships looked like a perfectly cut gem socketed into the side of the Steadfast and each was capable of firing a large magic based laser, which grew stronger if the ships linked together.
That alone would have made the Recompense a highly powerful carrier, but it also had thousands of fighters and drones, with the capacity to make many more. A dedicated facility for making ground forces, and specialized troop carriers capable of rapidly deploying drones, tanks, and command tanks if teleportation was unavailable. But Aurora wouldn't be controlling those, she didn't have anywhere near the multi-tasking capacity, and wasn't experienced in ground combat regardless.
She had wondered why the Maker had even bothered getting androids to captain his ships when the minds were so much more suited to it, when she'd voiced the question to Balistraia she'd been told "every Balistraia is the same, that makes me predictable. If someone learns how I'd react they'd know how every ship would react." And that the Maker knew androids were unique enough to add variance, even with the minds helping control the ship and its drones.
Aurora even had a sneaking suspicion that she'd been chosen specifically because of her unconventional hit and run strategies, rather than being some sort of hidden prodigy only the Makers chosen could find. As far as she could understand the ship was made to appear, launch a massive alpha strike, and then vanish before anyone knew what had happened. The only reason it even had ground forces was to raid stations and settlements on the rare occasions it needed to without needing to wait on another ship to bring the troops. And given she'd been told it could literally beam the troops to the surface of a planet or station and then teleport them back those ground raids would be as fast as they could be.
But all of that was nothing to the anticipation she could feel in her bones, the energy rising up from her feet and pulsing through her body. She felt like there was nothing she couldn't do, no foe that could beat her ship, no weapon that could pierce its armor, not even anything that could outrun it. The alpha predator of the stars.
Her meandering walk lead her deeper and deeper into the ship, through twisting corridors that she couldn't find her way through even with a map, the gem lights making the hull glitter and shine and the sound of glittering treasure guided her steps. For what felt like hours or mere minutes she wandered, her thoughts wandering the same as her form. And eventually she made it to the core, a glittering golden things larger than she was.
She felt it look into her just as she looked into it, felt its glee at being and the anticipation it felt to feel the stars on its hull, to stretch its systems and use its weapons, the sheer desire to test itself and experience life. She felt it judge her just as she judged it, and neither were found wanting by the other.
Aurora walked closer, laying one hand upon the core, it was hotter than hot and it felt like she should be falling to pieces. Synthetic skin should have been melting, the bones beneath sagging and turning to slag, but the core wouldn't let that happen, a shimmer of gold coating her and leaving her whole. Filling her being with power true as she felt a connection form.
She'd wondered why The Maker himself had told her to wander the ship, not that she wouldn't have done it without him telling her, and it seemed she'd learned. There was even more to the ship than she'd first thought, and she couldn't wait to find out just what it could do, and she knew the ship felt the same way.