28 - Breakfast at Hangy’s

Rogue tech programming was difficult. Maya stared at the tablet screen once more and then grumbled. The Rogue AI manufacturing module before her rumbled as it received the block of marsani and began cutting away.

Originally when Tender had found the manufacturing module, Maya had hopes that it would be able to make all the things she needed on the ship. But life happened, Shen came, she returned to Earth, Yosi was found, and all the other things that had occurred caused her to foget about the manufacturer. She knew that Tender used it, to make parts for himself and to fix up his drones, but beyond that it was a mystery to her.

She wasn’t stumped or confused on how to use it; she already had more than a few examples and some knowledge about programming rogue AIs. She understood system tech programming, that had actually come to her fairly easy. Rogue AI tech programing compared to system tech programming was like two people who spoke the same language but different dialects of it and then used two different alphabet systems.

Eventually she would understand it, but two days wasn’t enough to wrap her mind around it fully.

Her computer chimed and Maya looked at a small window that appeared.

Breakfast.

Maya sighed and inventoried the tablet. The rogue AI manufacturer shuddered to a stop and spat out a twisted and warped turret base. Maya picked up the metal, it was heavy and solid, but nothing like she had programmed it to make. She sighed again and tossed the warped marsani into a large pile of other broken and misshapen blocks of metal.

“Twentieth time was not the charm,” she said as she left the room.

Maya walked down the corridor; she had dedicated a large area as the rogue AI testing area, near the manufacturing area that Scotty now dominated. It wasn’t too far from the mess hall and her own quarters.

Yosi and Bell were in the mess hall when she arrived. Yosi looked tired and Bell looked irritable. Roci arrived a few minutes afterward, carrying a modified sensor box that was the prototype for Scotty’s mobile form. Currently he was still stuck in the manufacturing area, his core immobile, but like Nan he could pilot a secondary body to move around in.

“Good morning everyone!” Maya announced loudly and happily as she took a spot at the table. Weary eyes looked at her.

“That’s an arbitrary announcement,” Bell said. “There is neither morning nor night in this place.”

“Someone woke up on the grumpy side of the bed. You and Junior arguing?” Maya asked, giving Bell a large smile.

“I have not slept for two days,” he said. “Your insistence that we meet Whiteclaw’s deadline is the cause of that.”

“I’m pretty tired too,” Yosi yawned and summoned a ration bar. She ate it listlessly.

“Buck up, kiddos we’re in the home stretch. We just need to go and meet Whiteclaw, get our mana stones and hopefully we can rest after that.”

“I don’t understand the insistence of having ‘breakfast’ when I do not consume food,” Scotty said.

“Look, we’ve all been busy as beavers here, but we need some face time with one another on a daily basis. Where I come from, meals were the biggest part of the day, breakfast and dinner, always had to be attended by the entire family,” Maya said as she summoned a ration bar. She took a bite and grimaced.

“SIL behavior,” Roci said. “It’s weird. I do not eat also, can I go?”

“Nope. Family time is family time,” Maya said.

“We’re family now?” Zono asked, suddenly appearing. The dog faced SIL grinned. “I’ve never had a family… well, not from lack of trying.” He grinned again.

“Did your makers program you to be a creepy dude?” Maya asked. Zono shrugged. Maya turned to the entrance of the mess hall and saw Nan arriving.

“How’s our guest?” Maya asked as Nan’s small robotic body took a seat beside Roci. Zono waved and winked at the doctor.

“Badblood is currently in a medical coma,” Nan said. “She is an incredible SIL. I have isolated forty different species that make up her genetic structure. This is an incredible discovery and if I were a SIL I would have leveled from this alone and back in the Consortium, it would have elevated my position.”

A hologram appeared before them, Nan waved her thin arms and the image changed into dozens of different creatures. There was everything from a giant six armed leathery skinned SIL to what looked like a dolphin with tentacles.

“These are some of the species that make up Badblood. From the analyst, I believe the earliest DNA source was this,” Nan brought up an image of a massive snake person with a dozen long arms and vestigial wings.

“That’s a far difference from how the Tarvana look,” Maya said.

“Indeed. There has been a lot of genetic modification that has been done, via system tech, Skills, and Abilities. All of it geared to making the Tarvana able to survive in this place. The most interesting aspect of Badblood’s race is that they can modify their entire body over time, along with a very powerful regeneration ability.”

“That wasn’t helping Badblood,” Bell said. “Whiteclaw claimed she was sick her entire life.”

“Badblood had a lot of genetic defects, perhaps caused by all the different species that make her up, in addition she had a very aggressive form of cancer, her regeneration ability was the only thing that kept it at bay.”

“Had?” Maya asked.

“I have done a genetic cleanse upon her,” Nan said. “There will be some time required for her body to regenerate fully, but it shall all be completed within the next two standard days.”

“Awesome,” Maya grinned. “You’re the best, Nan.”

“Thank you.”

“Next business,” Maya said.

“Business? I thought this was family time?” Roci asked.

“Family is business and business is family,” Maya smiled.

“No it isn’t,” Roci muttered.

“We’ve got the turret situation figured out, we just need to make or adapt the existing tools to machine the parts,” Maya said. “I’ve been fiddling with the rogue AI manufacturer, but it’s slow going. I can’t dump its schematics into the VR due to it being rogue tech so I have to do it the hard way. Learning. Zono has been kind enough to manufacture the marsani blocks we need and we’ve adapted Scotty’s assembler to use a cutter to begin shaping the metal. It’s slow going, but we’ve managed the four turret bases and parts for the canister turrets that Whiteclaw ordered.

“Nan’s been multitasking and has created low-grade medicines and supplements to help the Tarvana get back to full health, along with creating the order of a thousand ration bars built to their specifications.”

“With this order, we’ve consumed ninety percent of the biomass we purchased from the Union,” Nan said. If you wish to continue to make more ration bars for the Tarvana and humans, we will need to purchase more or find more biomass.”

“That brings us to our next big move. It’s been about thirteen days since we last saw Peg, we need to hit up Haltor’s World again for some stuff and then head back to Earth.” Maya took a breath. “What are we looking at on power, Bell?”

“We have four of the crafted mana batteries filled,” he said. “Although we have now switched to recharging all the other batteries, especially the emergency mana batteries as you’ve stated you want the railguns up soon. We have fifty additional emergency mana batters that have been refurbished and ready to be charged.”

Maya grinned at the news. Bell and Yosi had spent the last two days pulling out emergency mana batteries and fixing them. It was a task their lower levels in engineering could handle and they had done spectacular work.

The Hanganathorie had three secured areas that held forty emergency mana batteries each. Maya had managed to only get five of the batteries fully working, that left one hundred and fifteen to be fixed. The main issue with each battery was the corrupted conductive gel that held the mana, over the last twenty thousand years it had broken down and caused critical failures in the components that made up the battery.

But with the 100 liters of conductive gel Maya had purchased, Yosi and Bell had been able to get fifty batteries up and running again. With Scotty’s help, they had dismantled the batteries, replaced the unusable components, replenished the conductive gel, and then dragged them to the Hangy and BR’s core to be charged. As it was, they were looking at nearly one hundred days to recharge all of the fifty 10Mg batteries.

That brought them back to their constant bottleneck, power. Scotty’s manufacturing area was beginning to siphon off a lot of power from the Hangy’s core, reducing the recharge rate of the mana batteries, crafted and emergency and tool.

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“Something weird happened to the test black goo net,” Roci said.

“Elaborate,” Bell said.

If Roci could roll her eyes, she would have. “The test batch Maya and Tender had made before he left changed.” Roci pulled up a holographic image and showed them.

Tender and Maya had created the first batch of black goo netting, a ten square meter sheet that they had left in the cargo hold of the BR. They had created the tube duracloth and then injected the black goo into it, using a complicated and time consuming process.

Then they had gone to see Peg and everything had been hectic since then.

Maya looked at the black goo netting and saw that it had… shriveled. “Did it dry out?” Maya asked. She knew the black goo wasn’t a liquid and only looked like one. It didn’t evaporate or freeze, it was just black goo.

“I believe that it embedded itself into the fabric of the duracloth,” Roci said.

“How? What we used wasn’t designed not to soak up anything,” Maya asked. She pulled the hologram forward and stared at it.

“I believe that there is a chemical within the duracloth that interacted with the black goo and caused it to integrate itself within the fabric.”

Maya sighed. “Is it screwed?” she asked. If they couldn’t get the black goo netting to work, they’d be damn low on power.

“No, it’s strange, but it’s actually more effective this way,” Roci said. She pulled up another hologram and it showed the power output of the netting, it had gained a twenty five percent increase.

“Whoa,” Maya said, looking at the data. “How’s the integrity of the fabric?”

“It’s still malleable,” Roci said. She showed another image, this time Roci flexing and twisting the fabric. It moved and there was no damage. The duracloth that Tender had created was one used heavily in space, it was long lasting and very strong.

“Awesome,” Maya grinned. “We’ve gotta run more tests to see how long it takes for the cloth to soak it up. It’ll make it much easier to make this way, instead of creating duracloth tubes.”

“That was my initial thought also,” Roci said.

Maya sat back grinning. Things were looking up.

“We’ve found the main mana battery of the ship,” Bell said.

“Great news,” Maya said.

“We believe that after Veskari landed the ship and after I entered the stasis pod, he shutdown the main mana core and safely purged the mana battery.” Yosi said. “The rogue AIs hadn’t gotten to it since it didn’t hold any mana and the conductive gel within it seems to be uncorrupted.”

Maya sat back and sighed with relief. “How big is that sucker?” she asked.

“It holds 10,000Mg and is approximately fifty meters long and five meters wide. It runs along the spine of the ship,” Bell changed the holographic image to show the Hanganathorie as it once had been. A proud blocky scientific exploration ship. He highlighted an area and it displayed the spine that the ship had been built upon. Under that spine was the ship’s mana battery.

“Ten… ten thousand megagens?” Maya gasped. “I thought they were supposed to be smaller?”

“Generally a ship only requires two days of power surplus in case of emergencies or battle,” Yosi said. “But this was a science ship and it had a lot of mana intensive equipment.”

“But it only used a C5 core,” Maya said. “At most they would have only been able to use 350Mg a day, not 10,000.”

“Mana cores are also expensive,” Yosi said.

“This ship is weird as hell,” Maya said. “Half of the stuff is cheap crap and the other half is expensive as hell.”

Yosi shrugged. “Huvano was ultimately in charge of this ship and it’s fitting,” she said. “This exploration had been planned for nearly a decade until Huvano took control of it.”

“Let me guess, a penny pincher until it comes to what he wants?”

“Yes.”

Maya grunted. “Well, I think that’s everything we need. After this, we’ll begin preparing to head back to Earth and Earth space. After that, we take another trip to Haltor’s World and buy some low priced goods, we’re only down to a million and change in credits now.”

“There’s another thing,” Bell said.

“What’s up? Junior related stuff?” Maya asked as she chewed on her ration bar.

“No. We found the ship’s shuttle bay and escape pods.”

“The what?” Maya spat out her half chewed ration bar.

“We’ve also found the emergency engineering AI,” Yosi added. “Or what’s left of it.”

***

“I was an earthbound SIL,” Maya said as she looked upon the hanger of the Hanganathorie. “I just don’t fully grasp the space ship aspect of this.”

“Understandable,’ Bell said. “I hadn’t thought about shuttles or escape pods until Yosi mentioned them.”

“I supposed I just figured you already knew and weren’t interested,” Yosi said.

Maya stepped forward and lightly touched the shuttle.

Nerigana Consortium Class 5 Cargo Shuttle - mid-grade, Tier 1.

It wasn’t how Maya imagined a shuttle bay would look like. Her only examples were from science fiction and they had all been large open hangers with shuttles parked within it. It wasn’t the case for the Hanganathorie. Instead the shuttles were clamped down into their own little hangers, where a robotic arm would extend them outside of the hull of the Hangy and then from there they would fly off. There were multiple airlocks that allowed cargo and crew to enter the shuttle, with the Class 5 shuttle rated to carry upwards of ten metric tons of supplies and cargo.

The shuttle was a hundred feet long and had multiple entrances, one for crew and several for cargo. Maya entered the shuttle and grinned as she set her hand upon the untouched surfaces of the control panels and devices that lined the cockpit of the shuttle.

“Rogue AIs didn’t like it?” she asked Yosi.

“This is a secured area,” Yosi said. “They would not have gained entrance.”

“This is so freaking awesome,” Maya said as she sat down into the pilot’s chair. It was a snug fit, but for a Nerigana it would have been comfortable. “Does it work?”

“Unknown. We need to get a full scan on it and see if the rogue AIs or time have degraded it,” Yosi said.

“The escape pods in the same condition?” Maya asked.

“No, most of them have been pillaged for parts, but there are still five that are untouched,” Bell said. He stood in the airlock, one look into the dark shuttle caused him to back out and stay by the door. The shuttle was also built to Nerigana size and Bell was a big boy.

“This will make the whole space thing easier,” Maya said. “If we can fix them.”

“There is a crew shuttle and also Huvano’s personal shuttle,” Yosi said.

“Of course, Huvano had his own shuttle,” Maya got out of the seat and looked around one last time. “This is all cool, but we gotta go meet Whiteclaw.”

The two nodded and Maya took one last glance at the interior of the shuttle and left. She would make use of it somehow.

“What happened to the engineering AI?” Maya asked as they walked down the dark corridors.

“It seems the rogue AIs salvaged it,” Yosi said. “We found the compartment that held the core pillaged, along with the core itself.”

“That sucks. We could have used a skilled engineer,” Maya sighed.

***

Yosi declined to join Bell and Maya on the trip to bring Whiteclaw the items she had purchased. She would man the sensors and coordinate with Zono and Roci on keeping an eye on them as they traveled the desolate wastelands of the rainbow sky hellscape.

Maya wasn’t expecting an attack from rogue AIs or betrayal from Whiteclaw’s tribe, but it helped to be prepared.

The buggy was modified after their little encounter, instead of Bell holding a rifle and standing in the cargo area, he now had a semi enclosed space to stand and mounted to the top of the buggy was a railgun. It was technically a complete defense turret, with it’s own sensor box and controls, but it could also be remotely fired or manually fired.

They approached the spot where they had battled the rogue AI, Maya frowned as she realized she hadn’t negotiated for the corpse of the creature. She sighed, it would have added to their black goo reservoirs and the rogue AI parts that she was collecting to build more machines or sell to Peg.

“I never looted it, either!” Maya grumbled.

“Ah, the rogue AI? I was just thinking about that too.”

“Geniuses think alike, pal.”

“Of course, geniuses wouldn’t have forgotten to obtain their spoils,” Bell replied.

“Live and learn.”

As they stopped the buggy, the ground around them began to swell and warp. Maya stared in fascination, it was as if the soft dirt underfoot had become plastic. It had a slight sheen to it and in layers it began to move, turning into liquid and from it rose Whiteclaw and many of her people.

It was a large gathering, Maya counted twenty five people. They all had that same low grade depression in their expression she had seen before, but also tinged with fear as they looked around. They were exposed in an open area and that would usually mean death for them.

Maya exited the buggy, while Bell and scout rats kept watch. She approached Whiteclaw and extended a hand. The woman stared at it for a moment and slowly took it. Maya shook her hand and grinned.

“Well met, ma’am. I come bringing you the supplies you ordered,” she said. The woman only nodded in response. Maya began summoning large boxes and then filling them with the ration bars. Tarvana ration bars were a teal color that Maya found strange, but Nan was sure it was what they needed.

After that she produced the defense turrets and many of the warriors gathered around it, whispering among themselves.

“There’s about a hundred rounds of ammunition for each canister turret,” Maya said. “Ten credits a round after that.”

Whiteclaw frowned but nodded again. “Ironwatcher shall examine them and see if they work as advertised.”

Ironwatcher appeared and began looking at the weapon, eyeballing it and twisting the turret to and fro. Maya nearly cried out when the woman stared down the barrel of the weapon.

“Jesus, kid. Don’t you know weapon safety? Never look down the barrel of the weapon!” she cried.

Ironwatcher looked at her confused and tapped her knuckles on the weapon.

“Seems solid,” she said after a few more minutes.

Maya nearly laughed at the pronouncement. They had no idea what they were doing.

“Alright, everything else is here,” Maya set down the rolls of duracloth they had ordered, along with he knowledge sets and tools, and other weapons. Ironwatcher snatched up the knowledge cubes and gave a growl at anyone who so much as looked at it with interest.

“And our payment.”

The head miner arrived and set down a sack of glowing stones. Maya wasn’t so rude as to check on the stones but only nodded. She hefted the bag and her computer automatically weighed it, it was what they had agreed upon. Maya inventoried the stones and smiled at Whiteclaw.

“I also have this,” Maya said. She produced a communications array, a small short range transmitter and receiver. “If you need anything or wish to contact us, you can use this.”

Whiteclaw looked at the device as Ironwatcher eyeballed it.

“In one standard week we shall meet again,” Whiteclaw decreed. “We shall trade once more for food and weapons.”

“Those ration bars should last you over a month,” Maya said.

“Our tribe grows still, they are needed for the young that will be produced when there is an abundance of food.”

Maya only nodded. “You’re going to use a month’s worth of ration bars in a week?” she asked.

“Some will be stored for emergencies but most will be needed for the young that are coming.”

“How soon?” Maya asked

“Within the week. A healthy woman can gestate a child every month,” Whiteclaw said with a little pride. ‘With this abundance there shall be many children born soon.”

“Jesus,” Maya muttered. She turned to Whiteclaw and smiled again. “Alright, in one week we shall be back. In the meantime, I have another item to share with you.”

Maya summoned a stack of booklets. Whiteclaw looked at them confused. “What is this?” she asked.

“Catalogs,” Maya grinned. “Of the items and things we can sell your people, besides food and weapons. I tried to make a system one, but it’s a lot harder than I thought. So its simple paper catalogs for now.”

“I see.” Whiteclaw shrugged and handed one to a warrior. He looked at it and tried eating it.

“Bland,” he said.

Maya sighed.