“Hull breach detected!”
My ship AI, Lucy called out calmly. Fan-fucking-tastic, I’ll get right on that, as soon as I blow up these assholes punching holes in my ship.
Three enemy vessels were lighting up on my sensors, all that was left of the six that decided I looked like an easy prize out here in this dead solar system. I glanced at the damage report screen and saw it was only minor.
“Missile lock.” Lucy chimed. I strafed left at the last second, and my rail gun turrets lined up with the sender of that unpleasant warhead. I squeezed the trigger and my ship thrummed lightly. Four momentary streaks of light speared through shields, then hull.
“Direct hit, energy core ruptured.” Just as the fatally wounded ship erupted in a bright flash, it’s core ripping it apart from the inside. Two left. I wasted no time skirting around the new wreck and locking onto the last two with my own volley of missiles, while two turrets per ship struck down shields, making soft targets for my warheads. Two blasts of destruction, then all was silent.
“Board clear, stowing weapons.”
“Thanks Lucy, that last missile was close.” I wiped my brow. This was my first contact with anything since leaving behind human controlled space. I quickly sent all 20 of my engineer drones to collect and break down the wreckage. I had some upgrades to make.
A few hours later, I had complete blueprints of the ships that engaged me earlier. They had surprisingly been exact copies of each other, which made stealing- I mean acquiring, their tech easy. Fabricators, advanced comms, engines, stronger scanners, efficient shields, translators, and all the data stored on their ship computers, the list was a treasure trove of information. This included perfect recycling of biomass, breaking down organic material into biomass bricks to fuel related functions of the fabricator. And best of all, warp tech. I already had space folding, but it took too much time and power to charge, it was a pain to manually pick a destination every time, especially when I had a very limited map of this portion of the galaxy. Jumping into a star would not be fun. So until now, I’d had to rely on the limited range of my scanners to safely put me into a new position. These new scanners quadrupled my pitiful 20 light year range.
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Onto my first upgrades, make ship bigger, and incorporate the tactically acquired tech. The broken down material of the ships fueled the work of my drones, expanding on my current hull. I settled in, directing the shape and functions of my soon to be monster of a ship. New tech was seamlessly integrated into my ship. I rubbed my hands together in shameless glee.
“What would you like to do with the remains of the crews?” Lucy inquired.
“Break them down into biomass bricks after getting full scans of them. They’ll serve as food later.”
“Very well, Sam.”
Two days of nonstop work, and all the remains of the battle were consumed to make me stronger. This gave me an overwhelming feeling of relief, I sagged in my command chair. I had kept a constant eye on the combat scanners, just in case.
I expanded the view of my scanners, and spotted a nice gas giant to hide behind in case anyone else hopped into this system. I plotted the course, then wandered to my bedroom. Plopping down on my bed, I told Lucy to wake me if anything entered the system.
Ten hours passed. My ship was safely positioned on the dark side of the gas giant. I ordered a medium steak with a baked potato from the newly installed fabricator, and dug in. These fabricators and the waste management system I had tactically acquired allowed perfect recycling of resources. I didn’t think too much about it. Other than it meant I could have steak for the rest of my life if I so wished. A few minutes after finishing my meal, I detected multiple jumps into the system. Four smaller ships lingered on the outskirts, different from the ones that had attacked me. I pondered on what do do.
“Lucy, can you scan them discreetly?” I asked.
“Of course, one moment please.” I waited with baited breath.
“Scan complete. New life forms detected. Two damaged ships among them. Blueprints acquired.” Interesting. What should I do? Oh, the scans showed their weaponry was too weak to actually hurt me in the time it would take to jump systems. Hmmmm……
“I think I’ll take one more chance on life out here.” I mumbled to myself.
“Should I plot a course close to these new contacts?” Lucy asked. Of course she heard me, we were mind linked after all.
“Yeah, let’s see if they’re friendly. Prep the warp drive in case we need a quick exit. I don’t want them to hit us with some hidden weapon if we can avoid it.” My paranoia was showing, but I didn’t care. I only had myself and Lucy out here. Anything could happen. Better to be prepared. We accelerated from behind the gas giant, shields up.