When I woke up the next day Springlit actually did bring me a good surprise. She had scoured the forward area of the Esperanto for materials that I could use to create a magic compass. Galan had trained me to build his signature device within the tutorial and I was interested to see how those skills translated to the same work outside of the tutorial. It seems Springlit’s intense observation of the tutorial allowed her to identify what was needed for the construction of a compass, but not how to build one herself. In a way it was a comfort to find some limits to Springlit’s skillset, though locating the materials for the compass so quickly in the massive forward area of the Esperanto was impressive on its own.
As she deposited the materials and some tools on the table in the sitting area of my quarters, Springlit shared her plans for adventure with me, “After you construct your magic compass, we can go on a journey across the forward decks looking for treasures and rare materials and all the other interesting things hidden out there. The mining decks have samples from at least every world that the ship has visited during the most recent five year cycle, but I’d guess it has more like a millennium of samples and the storage lockers are probably full of treasures many times older than that. We could find anything. We could find anyone. With its current assignment, no one comes down to this part of the ship anymore and it doesn’t seem like anyone cares about what is down here. It will be like our own treasure hunt.”
“If and when I can actually really make the compass based on what I learned in the tutorial and if it actually works, I will ask Geeq about the ownership of the items in the area and if there are any restrictions on where we can explore. I like your idea though Springlit. I need a project and this does sound like fun. How big would you say the ship is and how long were you hoping our first trip would take?” I telepathically asked the plant.
“The ship is about eight miles long, four miles high and four miles wide. The forward area is more than half of the volume of the ship. I think that we should plan to be gone for about a month, so we could prepare for our expedition and leave just after the jump coming up in just about two weeks. We could travel out for a couple of weeks and then turn around and head back via a different path to make it back here before the Esperanto jumps again. You want to be somewhere secure during the jumps in case something goes wrong,” explained Springlit.
Springlit had really put some thought into this plan and it definitely sounded better than sitting around my quarters all day. If it worked well we could do a few exploratory runs between jumps and I could spend the off time learning more about advancements in magic artifice and on any projects that we came up with as we were exploring. “I am in Springlit. Let me see if I can put together a compass that works in low magic particle density space with what we have here,” I said to my plucky new plant friend.
Springlit was elated and I got to work. Turns out I could make a magic compass that worked on the Esperanto without much difficulty. The range of the compass was more modest that the later models that I put together during the tutorial, but that was fine since we were in a confined, if quite large space. I had to work through a few preliminary lessons in “modern” magic artifice to get the most of some of the parts that Springlit scavenged for me the night before, but it was nothing too terribly difficult. It was harder to complete some of the work in the low magic particle density of this region of space, but it was easy to compensate for that after I understood the trouble spots.
It was something that deserved additional investigation, but following that project I had every reason to believe the tutorial had been true to life on topics like magic particle behavior and magic artifice. I had produced a working version of the magic compass before I turned in that night, but it was a hideous contraption. I had used part of the casing of a talking toaster that Springlit had found smashed into dozens of pieces in a garbage hold off the diesel deck to make the body of the compass. It ended up being best to repurpose some existing circuits to get the compass working with what we had, but Springlit had found me some primary metals somewhere, including gold, silver and antimony, which made the process much easier.
According to Geeq, the purpose and mission of the Esperanto had changed over the years and the items in the forward deck were largely abandoned. I could use what I found for my project as part of compensation for my “work” as a technician to make it all legal. If there was anything valuable that might have an owner, I could ask Geeq about it using the interface of my heads up display or an emergency watch that he provided in case I got cut off from the normal communication channel.
I spent the rest of the two weeks before the jump preparing for the trip with Springlet’s assistance. We’d be walking for the trip and had enlisted a couple of service units to help us on the mission. Springlet named one Leaf and the other Twig. Leaf was green and Twig was brownish, so I guess I got it. They were there to support in any way that they could, but primarily they were there to carry our stuff. I also managed to put together some basic and capable energy armor for me and Springlet as well as some upgraded adventuring models of my shield discs with things like hooks and ropes. I didn’t really have the resources to craft the kind of ceramic alloys that I was used to using when I had crafted similar devices in the tutorial,, but I was flush with lightweight and durable metal scraps that worked almost as well. I was interested to see how everything would work in space.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
***
Ships like the Esperanto traveled at high speeds, but to cross the truly vast interstellar distances that the ship’s mission required something other than speed was required. The Esperanto and other interstellar craft like her used shortcuts in space to cross these mind boggling distances in nearly the blink of an eye. In fact, most of the transit time of the trip was simply the Esperanto moving from one shortcut exit to another shortcut entrance. The process of entering and exiting a shortcut was called a jump and it was a weird experience. Each jump took just a few minutes as the jump engines were charged. When the engines were at their maximum it felt like space was ever so slightly bent and then, with a pop, you were simply somewhere entirely different in space.
Geeq had sounded general quarters ahead of the jump and, following his post jump safety checks, had again allowed everyone to return to their normal tasks after a successful transit. That was Springlit and my cue to get underway. We hiked out to the diesel decks with Leaf and Twig and stopped for the night before a bulkhead that separated the area that I had been inhabiting for the past month from the mining decks on the ship. The Esperanto was a huge ship, but it wasn’t so huge that you couldn’t have walked across its length in a straight line in a few hours. Unfortunately, there were very few straight lines on the ship. It was a maze and vertical and horizontal distance had to be taken into account when planning each move that we made. It was slow going, but that was fine as we were exploring and there was plenty to check out and examine in each of the spaces that we worked through.
We entered the mining decks proper the next morning and immediately on the other side of the bulkhead was a huge transparent window that opened into a large bay that was physically open to space. The hangar had a number of smaller vessels that looked like they might be used for drilling, blasting and collecting mineral samples and materials from comets, asteroids, moons and planets encountered by the Esperanto. The hangar also had what looked like ground equipment, portable drilling rigs and a myriad of samples that had been extracted by the ship during its travels. However, what really captured my attention as I looked through that window into the hangar were the large black space squid that were drifting into the hangar from the exterior of the ship.
I call the space squid black as that was their base color, but they had an iridescent purple sheen over the exterior of their bodies and huge faintly glowing violet eyes. Watching these cosmic cephalopods float into the mining bay against the background of the distant stars was an impressive sight, but Springlet and I weren’t here to study space squid. We pushed forward through what looked like a large laboratory space, likely for testing samples harvested by the vehicles in the hangar. Some of the equipment seemed interesting, but it was very close to our home base and we wanted to push deeper toward some of the stronger hits on the magic compass while we still had plenty of time ahead of the next jump.
The next space we explored seemed like a large storage area for supplies for operational mining missions. The space was generally disused but there were thousands of crates and we explored a few that at least provided a result from the magic compass, but we didn’t find anything that useful or interesting. As we pushed through to the next room, which was a control room of some sort based on all of the terminals and computer-like equipment mounted in the space. It was a relatively small space, but it had a restroom and doors at either end that could be secured from the inside, making it a perfect place to rest for the night.
We obviously didn’t have a campfire, but it felt like camping as we setup our sleeping rolls after a light dinner and prepared to get some rest. Springlit was clearly enjoying our adventure thus far and, before rolling over to sleep or whatever plants did at night, she thought to me softly, “Thanks Harris. This is so much fun. I saw you camp so many times in the tutorial and I always wanted to try it.”
I was awakened with a start as an alarm blared from the emergency watch that Geeq had given me. “I finally managed to boost the signal enough to get through to you Harris. There are relays down all over the ship. When we made the exit during our last jump, we picked up some kind of mana eating monsters. They have forced their way into the ship in at least a dozen spots. We have kept them from the populated areas of the ship thus far, the forward section isn’t safe. Instead of exploring, you should retreat as quickly as possible to the main crew decks in the aft of the ship. Don’t engage the monsters, they are extremely dangerous. We are working on a plan, but right now you need to focus on your own safety,” reported the computer.
“Got it Geeq. I will take care of myself and see what I can do to get to the aft crew decks. Good luck,” I responded. Yeah. Chalk another one up for camping.