Chapter 10. Said the Spider to the Fly.

While Watkins had control over the compartment, it would take some time for it to fully integrate. Until it did, he would have to wait for further expansion. At least he had plenty to do as he waited. His drones were hard at work, harvesting the debris in the compartment while they made repairs to its structure and to the reprocessor.

So far, the spider was content to remain in its corner of the ceiling. Now that he had enough resources to replace losses, Watkins conducted an experiment. He sent a single drone over to where the fallen husks of the spider’s victims were lying. It was directly under the spider, and he wanted to see if it would respond.

He had the drone walk directly under the spider, which didn’t move a muscle or try to drop a web strand onto his minion. The drone went about its task, gathering and compacting the scattered beetle shells until it had them all. It dropped the shells off into the reprocessor to be broken down into biomass.

The spider hadn’t reacted to his drone, but what would it do about one of his mutant rats. With more than enough resources flowing in, Watkins felt it fine to risk one of his MOBS to see if it could lure the spider out of hiding. Just like with his drone, the spider refused to react. Maybe later, if he had an open minion slot, Watkins decided he might make a beetle and see if that would prove appropriate bait.

His five drones were working quickly, but this compartment was even more of a mess than the previous one. Inside his core, Watkins could see the original overall schematic of his vessel was now available. It wasn’t very detailed but gave him an idea of what his ship was supposed to look like. Having secured three of the larger compartments must have unlocked something within him.

His ship consisted of five larger compartments all arranged on a single deck. A passageway ran alongside the main compartments, and on the port side of the passageway were smaller compartments for crew quarters, medical, and an armory. Above and below these compartments was a small crawlspace for repair access that the vermin must have been using to travel about his ship.

The outer hull was armored with two inches of strong, layered alloy. Watkins hadn’t extended his reach out that far yet, but from the schematics, he knew it was even more densely packed with various devices than the bulkheads between compartments. Toward the bow of the ship, he had a large empty compartment with no initial obvious use, and the final compartment, comprising the bow of his ship, held the torpedo room. Directly to the aft of his core room was the engine room, which would be his next target for expansion.

Data on the torpedoes wasn’t available to Watkins. It, along with many of the other subsystems of his ship, were just blank listings in his database. It was almost like the damage that had occurred to his vessel somehow tore out that knowledge as it ravaged the ship itself. The two torpedo tubes were for longer range firepower, and for medium or close-range work, he had a battery of two main guns.

The main guns of the ship were placed in single mount turrets positioned toward the bow. Installed in each turret was a beam weapon, similar to what he remembered as a laser from his previous life. The beams used his core’s power as an energy source and were focused through a 3-inch barrel.

The range for the beam weapons was moderate, and they lost their effectiveness at longer ranges. His ability to predict the enemy’s maneuvers over longer distances was problematic as the possible calculations for targeting grew exponentially. When locked on a target, Watkins could burn through most hulls with his main guns.

The final weapons on his ship were four single batteries of ¼ inch point defense lasers. Much less powerful than the main guns, the lasers were used to deal with any small craft or incoming missiles during a fight. The point defense lasers were mounted two to each side of his ship, with one pair near the bow, and one near the aft.

“LANI, I have the overall schematic for our ship unlocked,” Watkins shared.

“Excellent, taking over the third compartment must have unlocked more of your processing power. You might want to check your status to see if there are any other changes,” LANI suggested. It was funny, he thought that she would have been able to look it up herself, after all, he had granted her access for that sort of thing. Maybe before she could view anything, Watkins had to have the first look.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Vessel: Pending.

Vessel Core: Jesse Watkins.

Hull Durability: Unknown.

Core Processing Power: 13%.

Core Durability: 100%.

Systems:

1. Level 0 auxiliary processing server housing the LANI system: 41%

2. Level 0 universal fabricator: 100%.

3. Level 0 reprocessor: 77%.

Crew: none.

Core controlled units:

Command Limit: 10/11.

1. Simple repair drone, Level 0 (5).

2. Mutated bilge rat, Level 0 (5).

Resources:

1. Salvage: 37.

2. Biomass: 14.

“Well, it seems that both of us aren’t looking too good. Any idea why your server is showing as operating at less than 100%? I get that I’m my ship, and the ship is a mess right now, but I thought the drones had repaired you,” I asked.

“I’ll check, give me a few minutes to run some diagnostics,” LANI replied.

“Great, let me know what you find. I’m going to produce a beetle with my new command limit point. Also, I have a category called vessel and it says pending. Any idea what that is for?” Watkins asked.

“I believe it the designation of your vessel. That’s odd, it should have been assigned a designation by the station. This was vessel was supposed to be named Ex3, the third of our attempts at creating a vessel that integrated the core system you’re now inhabiting. I suppose you can now name the vessel whatever you wish,” LANI replied. When Watkins tried to access the vessel name, he received a system prompt.

You must fully repair your vessel to establish a vessel class and designation.

“It looks like we’ve got to fix this tub up before we can name her. Also, if this was experimental vessel three, what happened to the other two?” Watkins asked.

“Neither had successful core integrations. The initial designs had several flaws that we worked out with your model. For the first vessel, the core ignited its engines and headed out into deep space. An automated destruct program took care of it and the remains were used to start construction on the second vessel.

“As far as the second vessel. Hmm, that’s odd, I have no data on it. Maybe it’s in the data aboard the station, or maybe I’ll unlock it when my server is fully repaired. Now, unless there’s an emergency, I really do need to run the diagnostics. Why don’t you deal with that spider or expand to another compartment while you wait for me to finish,” LANI said. Watkins could detect irritation over the interruptions in her voice, so he held his questions for now.

His newest minion, a Yendax beetle, was now ready to go. He sent it toward the far corner of the reprocessor compartment, directly underneath where the spider made its nest. To back up the beetle, he had his mutant rats ready to go, just out of range, as well as two of his drones.

While he waited for them to get into position, something that LANI said caught his interest. For some reason, when she had told him about the first experimental vessel, his mind became a bit fuzzy. Even now, there was something about it that threw off alarm bells, but he could put his finger on exactly what. Maybe when he was in a bit better shape, he could think further about it.

Once again, something triggered in his mind. There was a danger here that his mind couldn’t comprehend. No, it wasn’t that he couldn’t comprehend it, it was that something was actively blocking the thought from forming. Each time he tried to set a reminder, the danger would start to fade from memory, and the set reminder would erase itself from his logs.

He was going to have to take other actions to remind himself. Before the beetle did its thing, Watkins had it etch a reminder onto the floor near the reprocessor. As soon as the beetle finished, a drone walked over and repaired the etching. This time, the concern was nothing but a bother, and Watkins figured that he had wasted enough time on some faded memory. With his thoughts refocused, Watkins ordered his beetle in to meet the spider.

Watkins watched the beetle approach, and the spider started to drop another line of web down. When the web reached halfway down, it stopped. Maneuvering the beetle directly under the web, Watkins had it patrol around, trying to get the spider to react. He was sure that the beetle, and probably his rats, would get caught in the webbing, but his drones, and their cutting torches should make short work of it.

While the spider was distracted by his other MOBS, the drones would scale the walls and attack with their welding units, defeating the spider threat.

“Not enemy.”

The words filled Watkins’ mind, and as he watched, the spider turned toward his core once again, choosing to discard its camouflage and reveal itself as it waited for a reply.

“Uh, LANI. I know I wasn’t supposed to disturb you, but this might be an emergency. I think the spider just tried to talk to me,” Watkins said.