Raptor One – Chapter 113
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Entering the bridge along with Peppy I sit on my chair and watch as Cold and Zu work on their stations while Shy train herself, the station itself isn’t that distant as we already flew half the distance, but when all things where good something had to happen... And so it did.
“*Warning, Beacon automatic message received.*”
Sigma’s voice was a rare sign, so the news did not seem good, but I still looked at Zu, A nod from her later we had our message.
A robotic voice resounds on the bridge. *Slipstream factor... Detected a sharp decline of Slipstream Factor, ship speed on current sector will return to standard speed... ETA: 5 minutes... Brace for ship slowdown... END.*
I and the girls where looking at each other, this was the first time I heard of Slipstream factor, and it was affecting normal space too.
“Cold? Can you be on guard? We don’t know how this will affect the ship...” I said insecure, this is out of my calculations.
“Sure boss.” Cold said with a nod before focusing again on piloting the ship.
Five minutes of tense waiting later I feel it, like a high wave passing by the entire solar system, as soon as it passed the ship I felt it jerk backward and saw Cold fight with the controls.
“Fuck Fuck Fuck! Brace for High G force! We are going to Mad Spin!” Cold berated out with a yell.
I took the hand of Peppy as the ship bridge had no holding bars and placed her on my lap, she hugged me tight while I clench at the chair, my boots locking to the floor as the ship jerked left, our body going right with force.
Peppy almost flew off me, but I managed to grab her on the last second as she yelped due to the strong hold I had to make, The other three girls managed to hold tight to their chairs while Cold tried to get the ship back to a stop
“What the heck just happened!? I almost got myself launched into a wall! Good thing I was Inside Selket so her harness saved me.” I hear Nail on the comms, a growl of anger on her voice.
“Not now Nail!” I said back on the comms.
After getting a little used to the high G force I was able to see Cold fingers flying on her console, the ship slowly stopping it’s rotation, the more she managed to tame the mad spin the more she adjusted her control on her navigation console, her hands working three times faster than normal as she tightened her hold on the ship thrusters, and soon we where no longer spinning.
I sighed and looked at Peppy that was holding me with a vice grip, I gave a chuckle and she jumped off me like a cat that had it’s tail stepped on.
“How’s the ship Cold?” I asked her and she gave me a nod.
“The ship thrusters are fine, a little overworked but no damage, just some very high delay due to loss of speed, something happened and the ship engines lost 95% of it’s speed capacity, must be that Slipstream Factor we heard.” Cold said and got back to work while bickering with her sister Nail.
“Shy? How's the ship?” I asked Shy next.
“Uh... We got light structural damage, the entire M2 part of the ship was damaged, from the cargo module, Reactor, to Science module.” Shy said and I scowled, just what I need, ship damage.
“Want me to check the damage boss?” Peppy ask me with a chirp.
“Da, do it, start with the reactor, I want it intact, see if we can repair it ourselves or need a dry dock.” I said looking her in the eyes.
“Sure that Captain.” Peppy nodded and walked out of the bridge.
“Cold, how’s the new eta to magma tesla station?” I asked Cold again.
“Sure boss, we bled all our speed, so the new eta is 5 hours.” Cold say after some calculations.
Stolen story; please report.
“5 hours? We where to reach there in 10 minutes?” I said a little surprised.
“Yeah, the new difference did this, we where almost there so that’s better than nothing, my calculations gives me 24 hours for a full trip from Luna IV to Magma Tesla Station now.” Cold said and sighed.
I was a little lost for words, so I sighed myself and decided to rest a little on my chair.
As I was resting I heard my name being called.
“White, wake up!” I heard Peppy voice as I was shaken awake.
“Chto?” I said with a yawn.
“I got a preliminary for the damage.” Peppy said with a small laugh.
“Uh? Da, What’s it Peppy.” I asked her to continue with a tilted head.
“Okay, the three damaged modules cam be repaired by hand, the hull itself was damaged but the modular construction of the ship allow for on duty repairs, that means we have bent metals on the Left wall of the ship due to sudden stress, the question is that we don’t have repair materials.” Peppy said with a serious face.
“You know... Being serious is not your forte, but da, I know what you need, I can make the repair kits for you, how much and what’s the process of repair?” I asked Peppy while getting up and walking out of the Bridge.
“Sure, I’ll need 3 units for each module a total of 10 units as I need the tools for repairs too, the process will be a little hard, the plates are a little ajar so I don’t need to remove the ship protection, but we will be half exposed to vacuum, the modules need to be decompressed, open to space and then repaired.” Peppy said thrilled by the prospect of doing a major repair despite the damage being minimal.
“That’s a big repair right there.” I said while walking into the forge module.
I took a brief look at the contents on my rack, I’ll need 20 bars of Fe, so I have what I need, taking the 20 bars of metal and another 2 of steel I got to work making the repair kit, 15 minutes later I was done making the repair kits, so I placed it close to her feet.
“There you go, that’s a lot of resources, so be kind and make it worth our time.” I said and walked back to the bridge after shutting the forge.
“Will do White.” Peppy said with a glint in her eyes, she was watching the entire time as I worked the fabricator to it’s bone.
Jumping down the stairs back to the middle deck and entering the bridge again I sat back and got back to sleep with a palm to my muzzle.
...
“White.” I heard Zu call my name so I opened my eyes.
“Chto.” I ask back.
“We are docking now.” Zu said with a smile.
“Spacibo, what about the ship repairs?“ I said with a stretch.
“Peppy got it all repaired and managed to retrieve back 17 units of iron from the scraps.” Shy said.
“That’s a lot.” I said with a sigh as I heard the thump of docking ports locking to ICW – Tenacity.
As soon as the ship was docked to the station I saw Peppy rush in, her excitement was palpable as she stopped besides me and waited, making me tilt my head before I remembered what we talked ours ago.
“Let’s go grab my new mech?” I asked Peppy and got a furious nod.
I chuckled at her enthusiasm and walked out of the ship with Peppy by my side, a glance at her guns made her nod as she unloaded it along with me as we entered the station officially.
Walking in silent enthusiasm for 30 minutes we reached the smaller ship construction deck where the mechs are also built, getting to it’s compartment I look around to see if Mercy our Lamia cyborg is there, luckily I do see her talking to a worker so I approach her.
She looks our way and give a bow after analysing the floating guns and my armor.
“Hello Captain Omega, how was your travels? I hope you did not have any accidents.” Mercy said after bowing.
“Privet Mercy, I’m here for the mech, and to see how you’re doing right now. As for the travels, we just got ourselves some hiccups, nothing major.” I said and Peppy looked at me with questioning eyes.
“We got shot on the reactor module, had a close call with a well armed pirate, liberated a resource node, had a mad spin when coming here due to unknown factors and you call all that a hiccup?” Peppy asked me with a tilted head, a frown on her mouth.
I see Mercy eyes widen at Peppy words but ignore the fact.
“Da, that’s just hiccups, bad situations is if we where disabled, or worse, accidents are if we get out of water for us, the reactor or the hydroponics, another one is if we get out of food, those are bad things, everything else are hiccups we can deal with.” I said looking at her.
Peppy got quiet with my words, still processing it, so I took my focus back to Mercy.
“What do you have for me?” I asked with a tilt of my head.
Mercy nodded and asked for us to follow, we did as she asked and followed, after minutes of continuous walking we stopped on a empty internal dock, Mercy started clicking buttons on the console close to the marked dock and took distance, the platform slid open, a mech, as big as a house appeared slowly on our vision.
“Captain, this is the mech I promised, it’s still basic, but it’s better than not having one. It’s chassis goes as follow by your instructions... Ronin cockpit, Rho pirate thrusters and MEKA leg chassis. If you look for at the front, there’s two circular ports capable of holding three tanks of LEF, UMF(Unrefined Mech Fuel) or RMF(Refined Mech Fuel), the ports are also reinforced so it’s easier to disable the mech than blow it up, the mech have eight thrurster nozzles, four on the back and four on the legs... As for how you’re going to move it as you fit...” Mercy say and start to rummage her robes, taking two big plates full of circuits.
“You’re going to need this, these are teleporter cores, it will send the mech into a sub dimension, like a ghost, phase into matter and collect it on the plates, when you want to deploy just press the plates with your hands, it will read your soul data and materialize it back into normal space, here, have a go... Remember, you need to synchronize with the mech before dematerializing it.” Mercy continued after giving me the two plates.
Looking at the plates they feel and look like two pouches, so after getting it connected to me via soul data I placed it on the two back pouches close to my back and tail, a press of my hands made it beep negatively as it does not have anything inside.
With the teleporter in place I got in front of the mech, I saw Mercy do something on the dock console and the mech got into standby mode, it’s frame lowering down and it’s cockpit opening into four portions, the plastiglass up, the ports to the side and the control down leaving only a chair accessible.
Jumping up into the control pad and sitting down on the chair I feel the mech rise back up as the cockpit close back up, the holograms coming into life as the hiss of compressed air is heard as the mech locks itself up.
I take my time learning the control and codes before getting the mech to lock to my soul data, it does so with ease and I feel my pilot helmet close in on my head, my vision going dark for a second before returning with new data, the entire mech data is now on my helmet, from fuel to frame status, done with my tests I open up the cockpit and jump down, my helmet automatically starting the teleporter core and as soon as I hit the ground the mech became red particles, flowing into my cloak, nowhere to be seen.
I thank Mercy for her good job and walk back to my ship with a very happy Peppy...