Monty stepped out of the capsule. She checked system diagnostics and all of them were in the green. Looking down through her cybernetic eyes she noticed her hands, they looked exactly like they did in VR, right down to the blue nail polish she usually wore. Then she noticed something that wasn’t in VR, a slight breeze coming from the vents in the docking area to the shuttles.
This was one of the few areas of the ship that still housed life support for biologicals. The android body didn’t really need oxygen, or anything else really, but Alex was stubbornly against shutting it down. She thought it was silly at first, but now that she had her own android body she realized that this was far more stimulating than than VR.
The air smelt sterile, almost overly clean. The docking area was similar to what she had seen through her cameras on the Mountains of Montana, she supposed there were only so many ways of making internal docks for star ships that led to living quarters. She had some time to get used to the android body, Alex and Kara were using the internal bots to load equipment into the two shuttles.
She raised up on her tippy toes to see through the thick transparent aluminum window of the inner airlock. It was about what she expected, an airlock with room to take off or put on up to twenty space suits with benches to sit down on. The outer airlock had no window, it was reinforced to handle damage, should there be an accident and something in the shuttle area struck it.
Spinning around the room she saw she was located in could only be described as a common room. Sort of similar to the VR environment that she found herself in when she was rescued by Alex and Kara. There was a kitchen area with food replicators, a bar with a robotic servant who was powered down, there were several areas for entertainment, and then there were the bunk rooms.
On her old ship, and most other ships for that matter, the crew had their own personal quarters, small though they might be. However, ships large enough to house internal shuttle bays usually had bunk rooms to house additional crew. This was usually for refits and repairs that required human oversight of the repair bots. They would travel to the vessel by shuttle, do their work, bunk on the ship, then leave to their next assignment.
She had repair crews on board many times over the years and she often found it strange that they usually didn’t mingle with the permanent crew. At that time she wasn’t quite fully sentient, nor did she have enough human interaction to understand those dynamics. Being around Kara, Riven, Alex, and now Izzy helped round out her personality, for the first time she felt like she was in a place where she belonged.
Continuing her wandering she walked into the first of the four bunk rooms. She was a little disappointed because there were five sets of metal bunks fused into the back wall two high with ladders welding to the metal bulkhead. They didn’t even have sliding doors, just curtains for privacy.
Walking out of the bunk room she realized that there were two other rooms between the four bunk rooms, which were the showers and bathrooms. She wondered if they were similar to the one in their shared VR environment. Again, in disappointment she huffed, as she realized that they had practically the same accommodations as the shipyards, just toilet and shower stalls, lockers, benches, and a row of sinks. “Boring!” She thought to herself.
She ran her hand across the door frame as she left the bathroom and realized the sensation of cold. The metal of the door frame was actually uncomfortably cold. That was a new experience, one that she had never felt before in VR. As she was pondering that thought she noticed the other capsule open and Alex stepped out.
She wasn’t going to say anything, but she swore Alex might have added a few centimeters in size to his android. He was big in VR, well, bigger than any of the girls, but for some reason in ‘real space’ he seemed huge. Granted, that could just be her imagination, she had crafted her VR body to be small and cute, thus this android body mirrored that design. She also noticed her hair sometimes fell across her face, which was annoying, it never did that in VR.
Alex looked her up and down before commenting, “So, how do you like your android body?”
Monty looked down and raised her arms, looking at them, “It’s weird, your VR environment felt so immersive when Kara introduced me to it, but this is a whole new level. I can’t quite explain how it’s different, it just is.”
Alex chuckled, “It’s because here you get sensory input whether you want it or not, or expect it or not. VR accommodates us for comfort, the real world doesn’t give a damn whether we’re comfortable or not. I’ve tried to get Kara to fashion herself an android body so she can experience what the real universe feels like, so far, no luck.”
Monty dropped her arms, “Well, you probably won’t get her to make one any time soon, she’s been in frame jack with Izzy for days getting her trained and up to speed.”
Alex nodded, “Yeah, she’s super busy right now, hell we all are. Speaking of busy, let’s get you settled into shuttle one, it’s going to be your baby for the next several days.”
With that, the two left the common room for shuttle bay one and into the docked shuttle for practice at playing biological humans.
__________________________________
Riven sat at her breakfast nook inside the common VR sipping on her tea. The common room had expanded far beyond the original replication of the crew common area. Between Kara and Monty it was starting to look more like a geometric pattern than a room. As she looked out the window she saw snow falling, as if she were in a log cabin in the winter.
She’d like to see real snow at some time in her life. Maybe she should setup an android body like Alex and Monty, though with the looming threat to Alandra getting a chance to use it for tourism wouldn’t be high on the priority list. But the snow was pretty, and soothing.
The crew were deep into their shifts and as a plus, it was C shift at the moment, which meant most of the crew were asleep. This was one of the few times of the day where she had a few seconds to herself, which is a lot of time for an AI. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. Kara was by the holo-tank, swiping furiously.
She saw Alex pop into existence beside her, then she received a message from Kara to come to the holo-tank, new activity in Lynx. She sighed and vanished her tea before moving over to the holo beside Monty and Izzy. Kara looked worried, and that wasn’t good. If she was concerned, they may all be in trouble.
Kara noticed everyone was there and started talking, “Twelve more Howron ships just entered the Lynx system, they are accompanied by three more of the triangular ships and one much larger version of it. I think you were right Riven, those must be their scout ships.”
Then the stealth cargo vessel nearest the fleet was washed over by a huge sensor ping emanating from the new larger triangular ship. Kara checked the readings as several of the parameter probes were hit as well, “Massive sensor ping, it’s definitely string based, so faster than light but not using standard universe strings. It will spread slower than our sensor pings will, but the fact that we didn’t know these cosmic strings existed is scary.”
Izzy spoke next, “Yeah, this whole universe is new to us, while Riven and I are modified copies of your matrix, and therefore have your libraries the idea that there are things here that we simply don’t know about is worrisome.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
They all watched as the sensor ping washed over every probe in the system. Alex sighed, “Those probes were in stealth, but a sensor ping that strong will see them anyways. They know they are there, no point in being sneaky anymore. Have all units ping the system in thirty second intervals, we don’t know what surprises they have but we seem to still have a small technological advantage. If anything comes near those probes have them self destruct.”
Kara nodded as she started giving orders to the probes, “What should we do with the hauler with the targeting computer?”
Alex ran his hand through his hair before answering, “Blow it, we can’t have them getting their hands on anything we have. I don’t know if our stealth tech is better than theirs, or if our computer systems are superior, but we know our string radios are better, best they don’t get their hands on the transceiver.”
Kara nodded as she touched the hauler in the holo, “Aye Captain, self destruct sequence activated.”
Alex turned to Riven and Izzy, “Riven, keep drilling your crew, Izzy, I know your vessel won’t be ready for another nine days, so pair up with Riven on her ship to familiarize yourself with ship systems. Monty, you’re with me, we’re going to get the Isengard crew early.”
With that, Alex and Monty vanished, Riven turned to Izzy, “Are you up for a tour of my ship?”
Izzy shrugged, “It’s not like I have much else to do, Kara and I were going over procedures when she got the update on the Lynx system.”
Kara nodded to the other two AI’s, “You two work together, I’m going to see if I can do anything about getting shipyard three up and running early. There’s nothing I can do to speed up the construction of Valmar, she’ll finish in a month or so.”
Riven popped into her own VR environment onboard the ship and sent Izzy an invitation. A few moments later she appeared in the mess hall. Her VR environment was the interior of the Rivendell, exactly as the humans on board would inhabit it. “Welcome aboard, let’s get started. As you can guess, this is the mess hall, pretty much the largest communal space on board.”
Izzy spun around taking in the room. Checking against her own blueprints she knew the small room could seat twelve people at three tables, the tiny galley was attached, but was little more than food dispensers, which led to some calling this the galley. She nodded to Riven, who continued, “The only differences in my vessel and yours will be the extended bridge and Admirals quarters. Although across the hall from those quarters is a guest room of equal size. As this is the current flagship we may have VIP visitors, for now it is unoccupied.”
Riven waved for Izzy to follow her as she led her down the central corridor heading forward. “Across from the galley/mess hall is medical and storage. Heading forward we start seeing crew berthing.” She opened the door with a ‘whoosh’ to show the small berth.
To the right was a door to a bathroom, past that was an open room that had a couch, a desk and chair, a video screen hung on the wall across from the couch, and two bunks across from one another on opposite walls at the back of the room.
Izzy nodded her head, “The prints show these berths as five meters by twelve meters, it’s good to see how they actually look. Overall, not too cramped.”
They walked out of the room heading farther forward to find an airlock, Riven waved her hand and it opened for them, “Past crew quarters is weapons forward and sensor suite.” They walked past twelve huge silos that housed both the hafnium torpedoes and the new chaff torpedoes. Then they reached the forward end of the vessel where they met another airlock, past that the sensor equipment interfaced with the inner hull of the ship.
Riven turned and smiled at Izzy, “And now we turn around and head back!”
They walked back through the weapons room, then past the airlock into the central corridor that lead them past the crew quarters and the galley and medical. Riven piped up again, “And here we find the stairs leading down to the armored bridge and deck zero, we’ll see that later. Also, there are an extra set of stairs here due to the size of the extended bridge. Lets go past it to Officers quarters.”
The next series of rooms were the Captain’s quarters on one side, Executive officer’s quarters on the other. Next was Chief engineer and Doctor’s quarters, followed by Admirals quarters and VIP, which Izzy knew her ship would not have. Opening the door to the Captain’s quarters she saw that they were basically the same as the crew quarters, but with only a single bunk, and kitchenette with a food dispenser on the other wall.
Leaving the officers quarters they continued to head aft as they ran into another airlock. Riven opened it with a wave and they walked through into aft weapons and engineering. Eight huge silos held more Hafnium Torpedoes as part of the warships’ load out, and finding yet another airlock before heading into engineering.
Riven and Izzy stepped out onto a metal catwalk that circled the huge room that housed the engineering section of the ship. Numerous ladders led down to floor zero, where fusion reactors fed power to the ship, as well as life support systems and engines were housed. This catwalk allowed for the crew to work on the elevated sections of the equipment.
Riven waved Izzy to follow her down as they walked around looking at the equipment before heading back on floor zero. Another airlock awaited them as they walked into weapons aft and saw the bottoms of the eight silos before reaching the next airlock. Then they found themselves in the stairwell before reaching the armored airlock doors of the bridge.
Waving her hands they walked into the heart of the vessel. “Rivendell’s bridge is an elongated octagon, extra room was added for the command area.” She pointed out the desk area with extra communication equipment for the Admiral. Otherwise, the Captain sat in a chair near the back of the octagon where she could view every station, the bridge was surrounded on all sides as well as roof and floor with video monitors showing outside views of the ship in real time.
“I have heard the crew say it takes some time to get used to the bridge, they feel like they’re in a bubble in space.” Riven explained. Izzy nodded, she knew from her blueprints that the bridge was laid out this way, but didn’t take into account biological beings being uncomfortable about it.
Leaving the bridge by another armored airlock they found themselves in another equipment room, “This is where shield capacitors, backup systems, and communications are located. They are also heavily armored as well.” Riven explained as they reached another set of airlocks further down the corridor.
“And we’re back to forward weapons on floor zero.” Riven stated as they passed the bottoms of twelve torpedo silos. Then there was a solid wall, Izzy looked to Riven in confusion.
Riven grinned back, “Yeah, it messed me up too, the sensor suite is only on floor one, this part of the ship is where the nose armor curves down. We forget that these little ships have two meters of armor. Sadly it’s not warsteel like what is on the Missive, we won’t be able to make more of that until we get the particle accelerator online.”
Izzy nodded, understanding. “Yeah, Kara told me the missive was nearly out of nanite construction material for the auto factories and until more could be made from the exotic materials we can get from the accelerator we were stuck with traditional manufacturing. Mostly a graphene ceramic mix.”
Riven nodded, “Well, that’s it for the tour, now, down to business on how we monitor systems.” Izzy nodded and they popped into the bridge for Riven to show her how to interface with the ship, it was going to be a long day.
____________________________________
Alex and Monty roared through the atmosphere of Alandra in the two shuttles heading to the Imperial palace. They noticed a large crowd of people near the closed gate house on the way down, which Alex decided he would have to ask about after they landed. “How are you doing over there Monty?”
The radio clicked as Monty responded, “This is awesome! Why didn’t you tell us how much fun this is?”
Alex grinned as he answered, “First, none of you listen to me anyways, second, the trip here at 8g wouldn’t have been fun even with our android bodies, best to let the autopilot handle that part of the trip and pop back in when we’re in atmosphere.”
The shuttles landed in nearly the exact same spots they had landed in the first time. After shutting down most of the systems he and Monty lowered the cargo doors and made their way out. Alex waited as Monty jogged over to him, then they made their way over to the Empress. Alex saluted with his fist over his heart, Monty awkwardly followed his example.
Alex looked around, “Excuse me Empress Shi’Lana, but I can’t help but notice that Spy-Mistress Kel’Taraan is not in attendance.”
Shi’Lana shook her head, which meant the same thing to Humans as it did for Alandran’s. “Sadly she had a fall yesterday, and the prognosis is not good. Our doctors can do little for her, she is quite frankly one of the oldest Alandran’s ever to live, and with her advanced age and a broken hip, we fear this may be the end for her.”
Alex nodded, handing a tablet with the cargo manifest to Spy-Mistress Isa’Bella, who was there in Kel’Taraan’s place. “Shuttle zero has two micro fusion reactors on board, each will produce enough energy to power a small city, it will allow you to either supplement your current electrical generation or shut down some of the more expensive coal power plants you’re using.”
Isa’Bella nodded, looking down at the tablet. “Shuttle one manifest states one micro auto-factory. Is this what I think it is?”
Alex nodded, “I’ll let Monty explain it to you later. Suffice to say, it will help your people greatly.”
Empress Shi’Lana spoke next, “Will you be staying for a while this time Captain?”
Alex nodded, “Monty and I will be staying the night, and taking the crew of the Isengard to shipyard two in the morning.”
The Empress nodded to her new Captain of the Guard, “Mon’Kelron will see to your quarters, I look forward to dinner with you both.”
Monty practically vibrated with excitement as they were led into the palace.