Chapter 36: A New Home?!
Location: Solar System; VS Stargazer
We return to the airlock, and this time there is a path that leads right through. The hatch on the other ship is wide open and excited as I am, I immediately step through. I instantly notice a difference. There’s this lingering magic power in the air. It’s subtle, but it does exist. Is there a magical power grid throughout the ship? Just like there was one inside of almost every house down on Earth?
There’s another difference, that comes to my mind. The size! I already knew that the Stargazer is bigger, but stepping inside and not being immediately in the centermost room of the ship still comes as a little surprise. Instead, I’m now standing in a hallway, that goes from one side of the ship to the other, connecting the airlocks on the port and starboard side of the ship. In the middle is an intersection with another hallway, that probably goes from bow to stern.
The hallway features a clean look, which reminds me of the ERS Verdinum, the first and only military ship I‘ve traveled with so far. I snort at that thought, traveled sounds like I did it for pleasure, but it’s not like I had a choice back then. Maja shoots me a questioning glance, but I shake my head. “Nothing important.”
We arrive at the intersection, and it does in fact connect bow and stern of the Stargazer, just like I thought. “Can you connect to the ship?” I ask Maja and she shakes her head.
“Not from here. I think, I have to do it from the bridge, and it probably takes a wired connection for the first time.”
Hmm, she doesn’t need me for that. “Okay, here’s what we're going to do: You go to the bridge and ensure a connection. Meanwhile, I’m going to check out our new home.”
“Okay sounds good. Let's meet at the bridge in hmm, two hours?”
“Yeah, should be enough time, let’s go!” I decide to check out the back of the ship first, so the end of the tour leads me to the bridge. With that, I turn right at the intersection and walk all the way to the back. Maja turns around and goes back to the yacht. Probably to collect a UC-cable.
While walking down the hallway, I notice something. There aren’t that many doors and the hallway leading backwards is much wider than the others. Why? When I open a few doors, I only find empty storage rooms. Where are the crew quarters and the mess hall or something like that? I take a closer look at the label next to the door I’ve just opened. It’s only the third one and I’m almost at the end of the hallway.
00-Storage 05. Okay, it’s the fifth storage room, but the 00? Oh, I’m such an idiot! I can’t do anything besides facepalming. How could I forget that a ship has more than one deck? Stupid small yacht! I’m so dumb. I should probably find out how many decks there are on the Stargazer. It’s going to take me longer than two hours to check everything out if there are too many.
I shake my head. I can check when I find a stairway or an elevator. No need to stress myself needlessly. If I take too long, who cares? Maja is only one call away. Now it’s time to finish this deck. According to the double zero, it should be the bottom-most deck. I’m curious about the big door at the end of the hallway, but first I have two more storage rooms to check.
Unfortunately, they are just like the others: empty. With a shrug, I close the final distance to the last door before me. I place my hand on the panel next to it and with a silent hiss, the door splits in the middle and slides apart. Behind it is a big empty space and I jump in glee. We have a hangar bay! It’s currently closed, but I can see the moving parts of the hull, where the bay can be opened. I look up at the ceiling. It’s quite high.
Now I can finally grasp the dimensions of our new ship. Our scans earlier showed the Stargazer as a ship with a length of 120 meters and a height and width of 30 meters each. Taking in the hangar bay, I guess it’s as wide and high as the ship is, minus the hull, and around the same in length. That comes to a volume of around 27,000 meters cubed… A quarter of the whole ship.
It doesn’t matter, as we currently are only two people aboard, but I now want to check the rest of the ship even more. There are only three-quarters of usable space left, and I still have to find the engines and the other things that keep the ship running. That’s going to use even more space… I guess, it’s going to be quite cozy in here once I have her crewed.
But there is one benefit, that makes the hangar bay completely worth it: We can take the yacht with us. With a length of just over 20 meters, it’s going to fit in nicely. I’ve got to talk to Maja when I finish my tour, she needs to concentrate now. I glance at the opposite wall. I’m almost at the back of the ship, so the engines should be right behind that wall, but there is no visible door…
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I wonder how I can get there… Shaking my head, I leave the hangar bay and look for a way up. No use in frantically searching for a way there now. I’m going to ask Maja later, there has to be a schematic of the ship in its systems. I find an elevator right next to the intersection that leads to the two airlocks. Before using it, I check out the hallway leading to the front, only to find more storage rooms. A bit disappointed, I return to the elevator. Pressing the button to call it down, I wait. With a chime, it arrives seconds later. Huh, it’s a fast one.
Inside there are buttons for six decks. They go from 00 up to 04. Interestingly, there is also a floor called -01, meaning there is one floor below me. That’s probably the way to the engines! It kinda does make sense… the hangar is a weak point and who wants direct access to a key part of a ship right next to a weak point? Excited, I press the -01 button, only to be disappointed as a red access denied flashes into existence. Ugh, I guess Maja has to document me as the captain of the ship first or something…
Well, this means I get to see the rest of the ship first. After pressing the button for deck 01, the door closes, and I move upwards. Seconds later, there is a soft ding, and the door starts to open again. I immediately notice a stark difference. Gone are the clean-looking walls and floors, they make way for a way more livable atmosphere.
That looks promising. The floor features a dark blue carpet, and the walls are covered with wallpapers, that show different landscapes along the hallway. Was that how Earth looked like before? Deserts, lush forests, gigantic cities, and even snowy glaciers. Everything is there. It must have been beautiful! This has to be the deck where the crew can live!
Toward the front, I immediately notice way more doors than on the floor below. Are those our cabins? I count 20 doors in total, ten on each side. It would be fitting… 20 or 40 crew members for a ship this size, depending if they are shared or single quarters. I decide to check out a few and open the first door. The room beyond is a bit bigger than I thought. Opposite the door, there are two desks. Between them there even is a window, showing the stars outside. That’s a nice addition! Left and right of the desks is a bed each. So it’s built for two people living there. Good to know. The room is finished with two closets. It’s not much, but it covers everything one may need.
The only thing missing are the bathrooms. I find them behind the fifth door on each side. There we go. Showers, toilets, and even a hot tub and a sauna. I smile. It’s those small luxuries that make a difference. I mean what other ship that rivals a warship in weapon capabilities in the Estriduros Republic has a hot tub and a sauna?
The cabins continue looking the same and I quickly skip them till I arrive at the last doors on either side. I’m now almost at the front of the ship and immediately notice a second elevator. The label above it reads Bridge. Nice! A direct access elevator. But why? It’s not that far from the other elevator… Captain’s quarters are right next to the bridge normally, so which crew member would need such fast bridge access?
Or maybe… I rush to the door to my left and open it. The room is different! It’s bigger, there is only a single bed and a second door to the right leads to a private bathroom. The captain’s cabin is down here too! I throw myself at the bed, testing the soft mattress. My room! Our new home. I’m keeping this ship no matter what.
The opposite room is the same, probably for the second in command. Maybe for Thomas? I mean Maja doesn’t need it, I think. I leave the room and am back in the hallway. Crew cabins check, now onwards toward the back! There I find a nice big kitchen with an adjoining dining room. The other side of the ship features a big living room, where the crew can relax with plush sofas, tables, and big screens to play games or watch TV. That concludes my trip through deck 01. It’s a big W compared to the empty storage deck below.
Deck 02 is just as exciting but also disappointing at the same time. It’s more like a work deck. There is a lab, but the equipment inside has seen better days… Another room is labeled gym, but it’s empty. A small server room is stuffed with servers, but they too look quite old, and the number is too small to account for a whole starship. It’s probably used for the work done on the deck here. The other rooms are currently all empty, meaning I can set them up as I need them. A nice addition is a small running track, that goes around the whole deck.
Deck 03 continues the work vibe from deck 02 and even features a large 3D printer in a room near the hangar bay in the back. I notice that the wall can open up, providing direct access to the hangar bay. Neat! Other than that, there are a lot of empty rooms too and the front third of the ship is walled off with a secure-looking sliding door at the center. That’s the bridge!
I ignore it for now, as I have one more deck left to check out before I meet with Maja. Deck 04, the one at the top. When the elevator door opens, I immediately notice the different atmosphere. There is much more magical power in the air! It doesn’t take long till I find out why. Behind a thick glass door, there is a big ass glowing crystal that reminds me of the Mage testing orb. It radiates magic at a scale I almost can’t comprehend. Is that the magical battery?
It has to be, lines are running from there which disappear into the ship, probably forming the magical power grid. The power concentrated here is insane. I wonder if that is on every ship or just the Stargazer because she has to run for so long.
A room further back features another crystal of the same size, but it feels like it’s empty. That reinforces my theory of a stocked-up Stargazer. Two crystals, one for 10,000 years each. The scale is still amazing. I mean the ship was cloaked the whole time and the cloak has to be magical, right?
All in all, deck 04 is smaller than the other decks due to the curve of the ship. There is another server room. This one is way bigger. These should be the servers used for the ship’s operating system. Other than that, that’s pretty much it.
Now it’s time to check out the last and probably most exciting room here on the Stargazer. The bridge. Time to check if Maja was able to connect to the ship’s computers!