Chapter 16. Unexpected Ally.
Watkins could see it now, the thin, nearly transparent strand of web that the spider had dropped before to snag the Yendax beetles. The spider had moved from the far corner of the reprocessing compartment and made its way unnoticed to the ceiling over the hatchway. Its web had landed on the main mass of the void creature and held it fast.
More limbs flailed around, and the void creature managed to latch two more onto the thin, but surprisingly strong and sticky web. Not seeming to care that it was stuck, the creature began to pull on the line, and the spider was barely holding onto the ceiling with all eight legs dug into the metal. While it was the size of a large dog, the spider was heavily outweighed by the void creature, and it was only a matter of time before the monster pulled the spider from its perch.
“Attack, hit the thing while it’s distracted!” Watkins ordered, taking advantage of his distracted foe. The eight drones scrambled into the reprocessing compartment and attacked with every weapon at their disposal. The void creature tried to shift part of its attention to the attacking drones, but when it weakened its pull on the spider, their arachnid ally pulled harder on the strand of web.
Each pull from the spider threw off one of the void creature’s attacks, keeping Watkins’ drones in the fight longer than they would have otherwise been able to. A ninth, and final, drone emerged from the fabricator and charged toward the fight. Distracted by attacks now from all directions, the void creature was still a powerful threat, and succeeded in grasping and crushing first one, then a second drone.
Watkins still had his fabricator queued up to make drones whenever there was enough command limit for them, so as soon as one fell, a new one began production. It was now or never, so all his forces were ordered to attack, the five mutant rats and his one Yendax beetle scurrying over the hatchway to claw and bite at the foe.
As LANI had warned, a rat was quickly snatched up by a freshly created limb on the void creature. The mutant rat was durable and managed to bite at the limb a few times before its body was crushed. Instead of tossing aside the dead rat, the void creature pulled it into its body, slowly absorbing its biomass to add to its own.
Despite the snack, Watkins’ forces were making headway, the void creature was shrinking under the relentless assault. A few minutes passed and it was now half the size it had originally been. Even better, its attacks and movements became more sluggish, as if losing so much of its mass seemed to hamper its function.
Another rat, and the Yendax beetle fell prey to the enemy, but the void creature was fading fast. After a few minutes, and more casualties, the void creature collapsed. Much of the creature dissolved away, but a small chunk, about the size of a cat, remained unmoving on the deck.
“LANI, should we try to reprocess that thing?” Watkins asked.
“No, our systems cannot handle it, the genetic makeup is indecipherable, and it doesn’t contain the same base elements that our universe does. In fact, a few of our experiments on the sample ended up damaging the equipment. I’d say, burn it down to nothing and get back to harvesting the real salvage,” LANI suggested. Watkins ordered the surviving drones to follow her instructions, and began to burn away the last of the creature.
“Thank you, spider. I don’t know if we could have done this without your help,” Watkins said over the loudspeaker into the reprocessor compartment where the spider had returned to its favorite corner.
Sure, it would have died without Watkins’ energy to sustain it, but he hadn’t suspected that the spider was smart enough to throw in and join the fight right at the best possible time. Hopefully, in the future, they might find some way to better communicate with the creature. In the aftermath of the battle, Watkins was left with five undamaged drones, two that needed repairs before they would be fully functional again, and the mutant rat MOBS.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“LANI, you said that this was just a piece of a larger creature, and the bigger one attacked a ship. How do they move through space, and how do they fight against a ship? Even better, if the extreme cold of space damages them, why didn’t you just back off and let it die?” Watkins asked.
“I only retain snippets of data on this experiment, the system focused on infusing me with data that would prove helpful in establishing you as the core of this vessel, and most of what else there has been pared away so I could fit in the server.
“What I can tell you is that the larger these things get, the more powerful they become, and the more abilities they can command. The one we fought had formed a hull of sorts and functioned more like a ship than anything else. I’m not sure how it does that, only that we found it had altered its form to match its environment,” LANI explained.
“Thanks for sharing what you can, maybe we’ll have more data when we make it to the research station,” Watkins said.
“Yes, I’m hopeful that we’ll both find what we’re looking for there,” LANI said. Watkins thought she sounded odd, like she was torn between sadness and excitement over what they’d find at the station.
His MOBS hadn’t been all that effective against the void creature, so he would focus on more drones for the time being. If the threats changed, or a slew of regular vermin spewed out of the station wreckage, maybe he could change things up. The focus now would be on repairing and rebuilding his ship. One drone was to continue working on the research module, while the others would repair any damage they sustained, clean up the battlefield, then return to salvage operations.
As new drones were produced in the fabricator, they would join in the repair and salvage efforts. While his team went to work, Watkins went back to his task of integrating the entire hull of his ship. Progress was slow but steady, and since his core compartment was toward the aft of the ship, he worked in that direction first.
While he worked, Watkins considered his new existence. He was an experimental design, and that meant that many parts of him would need further research and upgrades. The limits of his processing power were also going to hold him back. He couldn’t make the ship any larger than it was, and unless the research modules were somehow able to research better processing power for his core, he was going to be limited by what he had originally had.
It was a bit of a conundrum, expanding to the hull granted him more control over his core, but it also had him racing toward his limits. Watkins knew that he had a way to go before he maxed out his processing power, but the overall size of his ship told him where those limits would be.
Toward the aft of the ship, Watkins found another of the maneuver thrusters. It was damaged and offline but was more or less complete. Between this one, and the one they’d already discovered, Watkins was certain he could repair them and finally have a way to maneuver. His main drives were still a mystery, and he’d have to recreate them from the data inside his core, any data that LANI might offer, and some work by the research module.
Another discovery was found at the port aft section of his ship, mounted above where the galley compartment was, he found a weapon. It was one of his point defense lasers, and from its condition, it was nearly operational. Watkins pushed his control into the weapon, finding it was offline, but needed only minor repairs to be functional once more. Though gathering salvage and rebuilding the missing parts of his ship were the most important tasks, Watkins redirected one of his drones to repair the point defense laser.
He didn’t know what else might be lurking in the darkness of space, but whatever was out there, he didn’t want his ship to be completely defenseless. A single weapon designed to take out missiles and small craft wasn’t much, but it was better than waiting for a foe to blast him into pieces or board him when he only had simple drones and MOBS to defend against boarders.
The entire aft of the ship was now under Watkins’ control, and he continued his efforts to integrate the hull, moving slowly toward the bow. A quick check showed that Watkins had also freed up some processing power as he integrated more of his ship.
Core Processing Power: 41%.
Command Limit: 15/16.
<ol>
<li> Simple repair drone, Level 0 (12). </li>
<li> Mutated bilge rat, Level 0 (3).</li>
<li> Yendax Beetle, Level 0 (0). </li>
</ol>
Queuing up another drone, Watkins had it work on the maneuver thrusters. He wasn’t sure if it could repair them completely, but hopefully most of the work could be done before he needed to research further repairs. His salvage efforts were moving along at a steady pace, and Watkins was happy to see the blocks of salvage material were beginning to stack up on the storage racks near the fabricator.
He was going to need a lot of it if he wanted to rebuild the missing sections of his ship and prepare it to get underway. There was a station out there, a station that possibly held both his memories, and his crew.