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“Beta testing? Havic what is he talking about and who is he?” Roktar asked.
Whoosh!
Before the question could be answered Havics wings appeared and she grabbed the Tosk by the neck and flew almost 100 meters in less than 3 seconds and held him in the air by the neck.
“You bastard, you know I roleplay as a NPC! Do you want to fuck with my game play again!” She cursed spitting out the words.
“Hehe still playing around.” He said with a ragged voice that and was having trouble breathing. “Mind… loosening your… grip!” He said with shallow breaths.
“Hmph!” Havic sneered and let him go as he fell down two meters to the ground and she landed.
“Don’t fuck up my game play or you won’t be saying the light of day again.” Havic said as the crew had run over by that time.
“What is going on?” Noah asked.
“Come on, what did you mean by Beta Testing?” Roktar asked narrowing his eyes.
“It was for a project we worked together in.” Havic said.
“Yeah, we were beta Testers for “The Nebula” but Havic is an NPC roleplayer!” The tosk said and instantly vanished like air.
“YOU BASTARD!” Havic shouted but he was gone before she could react.
“You! Your a player! And you even had the nerve to sexually assault me and even mark me!” Alex suddenly reacts.
“That part I didn’t have control of myself. I don’t decide on that and it's fully up to the racial trait we have on that part. We can’t do anything whether it's a player or NPC.” Havic said in her defense. Suddenly her eyes turn fierce and looks around. “Get out here Ernest so I can smash your face in!” She said.
“Ahahaha! Sorry but no thanks! Anyway what are you doing here and not on that trade ship!” The tosk named Ernest asked.
“None of your business so get out here!” She shouted as she took to the air.
“Tell me and I will help you scavenge what is still useful off your ship before the scavengers appear and strip it bare!” He said.
Everyone frowned as they remembered how the low class scavengers were so well armed. On a planet of scavengers what kind of equipment do they use.
“The entire ship is ours! No questions asked!” Alex says.
“So you say but as long as it can’t lift off and you can’t defend it, on this planet its up for keeps!” Ernest says making Alex depressed.
“Is there no way to move it?” Alex asked.
“Tell me why you are here and Havic is with you and I will help you with whatever is needed.” The tosk said. “Also havic can’t beat me up.” He said.
“Havic, shut up and get down here!” Alex instantly said.
She was taken by surprise then frowned.
“Are you taking his side?” She said as she landed next to Alex.
“Completely! My baby is in danger so what do I care!” Alex replied.
“Calm down you two!” Hilda sudden stomped her way. “We are in the middle of a crisis and you just keep bickering like a newlywed couple! Let's get this over with first and get out of here. Ernest right? You get us out of here with our ship to a safe place and we will explain everything.” Hilda said negotiating.
“As long as you hold Havic I can lead you to my base. I have worked as a scrapper and can tow your ship to my base and hide it. Keep that demon tied up or I won’t help.” he said.
“Deal!” Roktar said and looked at Havic with a serious expression.
“Fine, I won’t hit him.” She said and crossed her arms and pouted.
A moment later the man materialized right next to her smiling.
Alright, I’ll be gone for about 4 minutes and will get my tow ship. Then I can take you all to my base.” He said.
“Where is it specifically?” Noah asked.
“Oh that's easy, it's that.” He said and turned around pointing at the massive husk of the space station.
Everyone was frozen by the shock as they looked at the massive thing.
“It was by luck that the station fell sideways so the interior is facing the proper direction but it was a pain to rebuild all the necessary systems for basic survival. I had to scavenge so many things to get power, water and air filter working. Then I had to seal of some places. Still there are so many places I didn’t visit because the place has native animals inside.” Ernest said.
“Like what?” Havic asked with her merchant eyes glowing.
“Specifically the lower floors. I live near the top, other places I haven’t visited much are the hangars which I found were kept in the void and weren’t damaged so the things inside will probably not be rusted even after all the years.” He said.
At once Alex’s depressed expression turned into one of happiness. Then he turned to Roktar.
“Boss! Lets get a bigger ship! Maybe one that is small sized but bigger than shuttle!” Alex said while he started to pant a bit.
Roktar frowned before giving a light flick to Alex’s forehead.
“Let’s get the shuttle inside first so we don’t get raided. Ernest go get your ship quick.” He said and Ernest nodded and left vanishing again.
Not five minutes later a large junk ship about half the size of the shuttle came and the bottle opened revealing a large magnet normally seen used by junkyard cranes to separate metals or pick up large metal items.
It dropped and connected to the ship before tugging.
With Lisa and Havic helping, we climbed back into the ship as it began to rock and the small ship surprisingly lifted the shuttle and got higher before it slowly moved us towards the fallen station.
After half an hour we spotted a large open port which Ernest moved towards. The height allowed him to fit both ships in and the width would fit four shuttles inside so he placed our ship down and then settled his own down before he exits from the ship and moves to seal the door.
It wasn’t an energy shield but a huge metal shutter.
They were slow but it was a very secure thing to see because it was nearly 2 meters thick. Such a huge door could take a lot of hits and it only opened from the outside.
“Come on, I isolated and repaired some residential areas and secured some weapons but my skills at most things aren’t exactly up to par to fix it all.” He said.
“Come on guys, then we can explain what happened.
We walk through the door out of the hangar and then enter a corridor that lit up with dirty yellow lights.
“The place is completely crashed but like I said, I repaired enough to live off.” Ernest said.
“Are you still in your ‘training’ as a survivalist?” Havic asked.
“Yes, selected this planet when the game went live through my reward.” He said.
“Reward?” Hilda said.
“Beta testers were allowed to use all the humanoid races. When I was playing since I have been training for to be a survivalist I thought of what I needed. It was when I looked at the Tosk race and found this race, its called a Salamander Chameleon Tosk. From this race I took up the assassin class and it fits with my need for survivalist since I can hide easily with my natural camouflaging ability and my armors invisibility cloak.” He said. “Here we are!” as he looked at a large bulkhead that had a door cut out in it and made of thinner iron
Inside was a much cleaner corridor there were several dozen doors inside.
“The first door is a kitchen, the second is my room, the rest are cleared room with any kind of useful equipment I was able to restore and move to the rooms.” Ernest said.
“Noah, go check the stuff out.” Roktar said and noah nodded in response.
He walked past and entered a random room beyond the two that Ernest mentioned.
Ernest himself looked at Roktar with a raised scaly eyebrow.
“He is my son Noah and the mechanic of the crew.” Roktar replied.
Earnests eyes widen and a toothy grin appeared. A mechanic that was already on a ship had to have some extensive knowledge of machines or at least some level of it.
“Lets go to the kitchen and you can explain everything.” he said.
Everyone enters and finds a seat somewhere and they begin explaining all the facts from the bandit base raid to Kelha II’s situation and then the bandit fleet coming after the Xetra Blink Drive.
Once the drive was mentioned he looked at Havic serious.
“You actually didn’t search anything for trackers! Are you all stupid! Did you check everything before you ran away?” Ernest said with a frown.
“Everything with any remote importance, just some trash items or extra items we already used and have no use anymore that we obtained.
At that time he instantly stood up and left.
“Where are the items?” He asked stopping in front of the door.
“In a box in the cargo.” Roktar says and the Tosk vanished running out.
Everyone followed and soon reached the cargo after passing through the ale storeage leaving Roktar horrified to find half of the barrels broken and from those that survived more than half were thrown around and probably the sediments were mixed again greatly ruining the quality. Only 3 barrels that were near the front side of the ship were spared since the other barrels held them in place.
Though Roktar felt like crying they ignored it for now and went into the cargo where Ernest was pulling out everything from the box of trash items and dismantling it all. Several items went until he pulled out the no emptied hologram pad that held all the schematics and blueprints. He opened it up and after removing one side of the plates a tracker fell out.
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His eyes moved to us and she scowled and crushed the tracker.
“Now you search everything again and properly this time. Review all the ships, as of now they know where you are even if you get rid of the trackers but they will have a harder time figuring out which ship it is but I’m sure if they really want the Blink Drive they will make a blockade in space.” Ernest said.
“Do what now?” Jessica asked.
“Well this ship is trash, slow, poorly armed and can’t handle shit. That said, you all seem to have a good stock of weapons so if we can repair the wiring within other hangar doors and rooms we can access the other ports and take a bigger better ship after repairing it to full potential.” He said.
Alex’s eyes shined and he smiled.
“What about the Blink Drive?” Roktar asked.
“Obviously we take it, why the hell wouldn’t we when its the a tech that possesses the base of Warp tech which is thousands of times better then FTL drive. This station possesses from small ships and below I believe. Anything bigger wouldn’t fit unless it's the smallest medium sized ships. There should be none that don’t come with FTL drive and mixed with the drive we can possible use the blink a few times since the ships can produce greater amounts of power since the generators are stronger.” He said.
“Wait! You said we?” Havic said.
“Yeah, I am going with you, since you landed in this area, it will take a while but after doing many readings of the last traces of the signal they will eventually reach this place and raid the station and find the ship so I’m leaving and since you caused the problem you are responsible.” He said.
“What about your survivalist training?” Roktar asked.
“I served the US military for 2 year and have been training to be a survivalists for 3 already. That is more than 8 years of army service and 12 years of experience since it was all done in Virtual worlds. I think a change of pace now would be a good idea. Space army would be interesting but being part of a crew and helping it grow would be just as fun.” He said standing up.
“We need to repair parts of the station to get to the ships though.” Noah said coming inside the cargo.
“So how are the equipment?” Jessica asked.
“Well, for a survivalists patch work it's rather good but if I put it in a pro’s perspective it would be poorly repaired to just functioning conditions. Both the power generator, water filter and container and air filter. If I work on them for about a day or two I can get them working at full power. It should be enough to power much more of the things around here. If you want more then we need to find other power generators and turning more of them on to slowly bring power back to the station as well as fix the wiring.” Noah said.
“I found that it there are 4 generators that power this section of the station. To get them all working would probably allow the station to work, as you saw, the hangar doors are slow but that is because the power is low so it doesn’t move as quick but with all of them working it would move faster.” Ernest said.
“Then lets just go and fix them and if any monsters get in our way we just crush them!” Hilda says showing a savage grin.
“Ahaha, she seems fun. Well it is easier said than done. The animals in question are somewhat humanoid and feral man eaters with thin limbs and black skin that allows them to blend and they can even move on the walls. They are perfect stalkers and hunters and make no noise as long as they don’t want to.” Ernest said.
“That is what trackers are for, Noah, Jessica said she has plans for an upgrade that involved trackers in our system.” Hilda said.
“Is it a physical upgrade?” he asked.
“No its a program but since we both work programming I thought it would be good to ask you but since it wasn’t needed I never asked.” Jessica said a bit embarrassed.
“Needs will always make one thing more important than another in different circumstances.” Noah replied.
“For now let us return to the safe area but let's grab all the ammo and weapons before we leave, Noah, go check your bot then bring it out as well.” Roktar said.
“Wait, do you have rooms for us?” Alex asked.
“Sorry, i’ve been alone here for a while so the room only has one bed.” Ernest said.
They all look at each other.
“We will make shifts to guard then, the rooms in the ship will work for us and tomorrow we can go out and fix up some lodging. Noah you start repairing the power generator since it's the most important at the moment.” Roktar said.
“I will go with you, I have a parts storage made for random stuff to use to repair.” Ernest said.
“Lisa, Hilda, Jessica and Alex! Help me move any surviving things from the ship, Food, weapons, tools, equipment and all that.” Roktar said.
Everyone got moving. Roktar did however spend about half an hour seperating the only still undestroyed ales and stalking the damaged goods getting them out of the way.
All the moveable goods and things on the ship, besides clothes, beds and enough weapons to defend, were removed and put in an empty room in the safe zone.
After a few hours of work they finally moved all the things besides the water which needs to be drained but was left for use on the ship that still had a working power generator and most of the lights worked. The shields were put back online and were set to keep everything out including life forms during the night.
***
“So have you determined where those fucks are?!” Cleave the bandit raid leader said as he looked at the screen.
“Yeah boss, it's like you said, the wormhole opened up only 5 minutes after they jumped but they are almost 340 parsec away to the Venturi system!” One of the men said making everyone shocked.
“This is what we want boys! This tech is the power only we need. That drive will open up the wormhole tech that is eons better than the FTL drive! Men make an estimate of the time until we reach the Venturi system?” Cleave asked.
After a moment one of the men turned.
“It will take around 2 months sir!” He said a saluted.
The disparity between FTL and wormhole tech was far too large. It took 5 minutes to pass 340 parsec yet it takes 2 months by FTL drive.
To get that tech will allow them to raid anyplace as they please not to mention being able to do hit and run all across the galaxy and expand beyond the borders of ‘known’ space.
As all the ships were getting in sync to enter FTL at the same time something came up after several hours of procuring provisions.
“Boss, it seems the remaining trackers on the ship of that crew was found and destroyed.” The man said.
“Doesn’t matter, the report said the rear thrusters were shot so if they crashlanded then the ship is out of commission and repairing such things isn’t a one night thing besides for a large crew or a structured station. Only if they get a completely new ship they can get away but it's not like they can find any random ship just laying around up for grabs without it being stripped bare. They won’t be off the planet they are on anytime soon.” Cleave said.
***
After two days and the power generator was repaired another two were quickly found and brought online. Though there were several cables that cut power to some areas the parts that governed the hangars weren’t broken and soon the consoles to all the hangars were online and the dirty dull yellow light was powered until it was a bright yellow.
The crew had encountered the animals and found they were like feral rat beasts. They were all ranging around level 25-40 but as anything made of flesh and blood, bullet wound can’t be underestimated and with Noah in the front after removing his wings he rushes and blocks their path in his robot which still fits with room to spare in the corridors they attacked and killed anything they found.
As for the vacuum ports, with the power restored the lights inside could be turned on and the situation inside was seen. Of the 50 ports more than 30 had partially damaged ships and the rest were small ships that were tossed around to much.
At this time they were looking at the fine port.
On the console the camera slowly turned on and what came into the view of everyone shocked them.
Locked down with massive supports like a rocket would have when ready to launch was a category small ship that was 200 meters long in a triangle like format where the bridge was at the front and was around 15 meters wide but at the back it reached 50 meters wide with 6 floors with 1 being cargo. The ship was clearly a combat type ship because just on the upper side there was eight turret slots, all empty. The ship’s top floor near the back half extended into the wings and the two main rear thrusters were connected to the bottom but not built directly into the ship's body.
“Fuck! There was actually a Venturi Battle Frigate in this trashed station!” Ernest shouted then examined. “Fuck! The turrets are gone! I wonder what the interior looks like?” Ernest said.
“Is this good?” Hilda asked confused.
“It’s better than good, the size is around the middle ranks of the small ship category but its a fighter category ship which means it was made to fight. Its fire power makes your shuttle look like a toy. Come on open the vents and lets check this ship out!” Ernest said excited.
Opening the door through the console after the air was filled inside, the crew entered and headed to look at what will be their new ship.
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New ship
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H7gObIzIVj4/VzZbpYiY-bI/AAAAAAAAC00/KzUZ1xMFokA7ygQlR4crbyK46sDWnplTQCK8B/s400/2016-05-13.png