Chapter Sixty-Five - Big Plans
Day hovered next to the To Infinity... and Beyond. The massive FTL ship dwarfed her, and its sheer bulk kind of made her feel tiny. Still, she could set that aside easily enough.
The ship was currently being assaulted by a whole army of drones from the shipyard on Ceres. Now that their main repair drone force wasn’t as busy, there was more time to work in this behemoth of a vessel, and it needed a lot of work.
The ship was surrounded by a dozen cargo containers, each nearly as long as Day herself was, with small thrusters to keep them locked into place as materials were dragged out of the FTL ship and tossed away.
Unfortunately, a vast majority of those materials weren’t readily usable. There were metals, sure, but lots of plastics and polymers and electronics in the Accord style, which were difficult to salvage.
Day wished she could do more with the materials, but they’d take a long time to sort through. So for now, they’d be brought down to Ceres and The Weeping of Mothers would take some time to see what she could do with it all. Probably turn it into more drones. They hadn’t lost too many, but with each new sister having their own complement of repair drones on board, that meant that their reserves were being stretched. Building new ones wasn’t at the top of their priority list, but it was high enough that they’d get too it sooner rather than later.
The FTL ship was being partially gutted in the meantime.
Partially, because the ship’s FTL systems were still a mystery. There were files onboard the ship that showed how to maintain it, but they didn’t explain its workings in anything but the simplest of terms.
If they took it apart now, there was a very real possibility that they wouldn’t be able to get it working again. It was a black box, of sorts, and the system, being a couple of kilometres wide and long, with literally billions of interconnected parts discouraged them from even trying.
So they were doing the next best thing. They were removing everything else.
The living quarters weren’t needed, obviously. The multiple garages, ship repair bays, docks, salvage holds, foundries, kitchens, washrooms, and the indoor gyms weren’t anything that the ERF cared for, not in the shape they were in.
The ship had three interior rings that could spin to create some artificial gravity, and those were being tossed out as well. The tricky part came from just how entangled everything was. They were checking twice to make sure that nothing they removed was connected to the FTL systems.
The ship’s main ion drive was being kept as well. It wasn’t efficient, not even by Accord standards, but it was so massive that replacing it with something better would be a huge undertaking.
In any case, they were removing hundreds of tons from the ship’s total mass, so that would help when it came time to get it moving.
“This is going to take years,” Dawn said as she hovered closer.
Day checked her surroundings and noticed that Dawn had been coming closer for a while. She was still ostensibly working on a few projects of her own, of course, but they were in the periphery.
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“You mean The Weeping of Mother’s plan?” Day asked.
The plan in question was relatively simple, but yes, it was also time consuming. It involved hollowing out the FTL ship an studying the drive as much as they could without damaging it. Then they’d rebuild around that drive.
The current design called for a large, flat ship with a wide mouth at the end. It wasn’t too dissimilar to a whale shark in appearance. They’d outfit it with new drives, including long French drives to give it a boost in acceleration, then they’d fill the vessel with mobile factories and assemblers and refineries. Basically, turning it into another ERF base, but one which could move around and house dozens of ships of Day’s size and larger.
And it would make sense for it to fit dozens of them, because by the time the construction on the remodelled ship was done, Day fully expected six to eight years to pass.
For now, the plan was simply to gut it, then guide the ship out to the very edge of the system where they could let it go dark on the inner edge of the magnetosphere until the next Accord patrol passed.
“I think it’ll be worth it,” Day said. “It will basically unlock the stars for us. We’ll finally be able to leave Sol, to see the rest of the galaxy. The way the Accord acts suggests that they don’t rule everything. They’ll have enemies who might become allies.”
“I know,” Dawn agreed. “I think I’m looking forward to it as well, but it feels like a very distant thing. First, we need to survive the Accord’s next patrol.”
Day sent back a simple affirmation. There was no question that surviving was their highest priority.
“In any case, I have what you asked for.”
Day perked up at that. “You do?”
Dawn opened one of her drone bays and launched a relatively large drone. It was outfitted with a great deal more thrust than their average drone, and was built off the frame of one of their shark torpedo launcher drones. Only instead of torpedo tubes, this drone was equipped with a much larger sensor suite.
“Thank you!” Day said. This was perfect. She took control of the drone, then brought it in close. “I’ll go launch this as soon as I’m done here.”
“I can take over, if you want,” Dawn said.
“Are you sure?”
Dawn’s reply was a simple affirmative. “Yes. I wasn’t doing anything too important, and this seems like something you care a lot about.”
“Thank you,” Day said, meaning it. “I’ll return the favour one of these days.”
Day finished up what she was doing, then scooted back towards Ceres. Twilight and Lullaby were waiting for her there, the destroyer looking somewhat silly with a large cannon strapped to her hull. They were nearing completion with their own projects in any case.
Soon they’d be heading towards Mars, where Day intended to discover what happened to the Brief Candle, and along the way, they’d be installing a wonderful surprise for the Accord when they showed up again.
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