Chapter 20. Incoming Void Creature.


    Watkins focused on his connection to the point defense turret. The laser inside was firing on its normal programming, unleashing enough power to defeat a rather delicate anti-ship missiles or the small attack craft it was designed to fight. Here, Watkins needed more than just a brief burst of power, he needed to burn that void creature to ash.


    Through the connection, he could see the channels on the hull that the weapon used to draw power from his core. As the laser fired its next pulse of energy, Watkins did more than just allow it to draw from his core, he force-fed the weapon more of his power. The reddish-orange color of the beam turned to blood red, and it fired for nearly twice as long as a regular pulse.


    The beam burrowed into the monster, digging far deeper than the previous strikes. A second, then a third pulse landed, and the creature visibly writhed as its body was burned and whatever made up the insides of the thing spilled into space. When the fourth beam fired, Watkins could tell that the point defense laser was heating up. A fifth beam caused Watkins pain as he fired it.


    He could sense that the creature was dying, but he needed just a bit more damage to finish it off. Ignoring the pain, Watkins fired the enhanced beam a sixth time. Pain flared on his hull as the focusing mirror of the point defense turret melted down and damaged many of the weapon’s internal components.


    Another pain hit him, this time amidships. Shifting his focus, Watkins could see a blob of green, mucous-like slime melting into the armored deck. The goo quickly began to lose its potency, and he was spared a hull breach. Despite being spared the destruction of a hull breach, the damaged section of his hull continued to ache in a way that reminded Watkins of a burn he suffered from a flare up on his grill at home. The brief memory of a cookout dissipated before the pain did.


    “I’m sorry, Captain Watkins, my calculations were off, and that last shot got through. I hadn’t accounted for the creature learning my evasion pattern and using it against me. Thankfully, it looks like that last hit destroyed the void creature,” LANI apologized.


    Watkins looked through his sensors, and while there was still much of the creature wound through the wreckage, it was inert, and he detected no life on the incoming chunk of debris. He wasn’t convinced, however, and ordered three of his drones to effect repairs on his point defense turret. Without the other vessel changing course, it was easy to pull alongside as he waited for his laser to come back online.


    “I think we can reasonably believe that the creature is dead,” LANI said, noticing his reluctance to pull closer the debris.


    “I don’t doubt your data, LANI, but these things are adaptable, and who’s to say this one didn’t leave a surprise behind as a failsafe? I’d much rather just keep it at arm’s length until the point defense turret is back online. Let me blast that thing to pieces and I’ll feel more comfortable bringing it into contact with our ship,” Watkins explained.


    “Fine, I suppose it’s not the most inefficient action. Our course is taking us further out of the system, but when we gather the aft section salvage and add the second operational thruster to our ship, we’ll quickly make up for lost time. While you work, I’ll continue to assist the research module,” LANI said.


    “Great, for now, I’ll have the drones not on repair duty continue salvaging operations and I’ll try to finish integrating the rest of the ship. When the point defense turret is back online, I’ll start poking that monster’s corpse to make sure it’s safe. Why do you think it died with so much mass left? The other one was effective, and it was much smaller than what’s left aboard the aft section?” Watkins asked.


    “It’s one of the things our research was working on. Our best guess was that as these things grow, their functions come under the control of a central hive mind of sorts. Cause enough damage to the creature and the hive mind can no longer maintain its life functions. Just remember, no matter how big, if you do enough damage, they die. Take that explanation with some skepticism, though, I don’t have the full research data in my server here, most of it will be on the station or destroyed,” LANI explained.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    “Thanks, we’ll get to the station eventually, and that should give us answers or at least some insight for a lot of questions we have,” Watkins said as they both returned to their tasks. He pushed his core integration toward the bow, moving slowly across the entire hull. As he closed in on the bow, two new structures were discovered.


    The first was one of his main gun mounts. It looked like these council people had installed the turret mechanism, but not any weapon yet. From the limited data, he knew the main guns were much more powerful than the point defense laser he had just used. The guns featured a 3-inch focusing array compared to the small ? aperture of the point defense laser. Capable of maintaining its fire for a longer period of time, the guns would be devastating to something Watkins’ size if they faced more ship-to-ship combat.


    Sadly, the details on the main guns were missing and producing one would mean reaching the research station and downloading any information they might have. He supposed that he could eventually research how to build and mount the laser cannon main guns, but Watkins had no idea how long that might take usin his single, rather inadequate research module.


    His push forward had also uncovered another part of his ship. This time, it was a small sensor bank located on the bottom hull of the ship. The hull bulged out in a rectangular shape where the sensor bank was located. While his sensor nodes were spread out all over the hull of his ship, this section was more densely packed with them.


    Just like most of rest of his vessel, the sensor bank was offline and damaged. Unlike the rest of his ship, the damage was minimal, and there was enough left of that part of the hull which allowed Watkins to use it as a pattern for the repairs. Another pair of drones were pulled from salvage operations to work on the sensor bank.


    Locating threats before they spotted his ship was going to be key to surviving another attack like the one that they had just experienced. With plenty of salvage pouring in, and the aft chunk waiting to be recovered, Watkins was feeling more confident in his ship becoming whole once more.


    After integrating the sensor bank, his core processing power bumped up again, from 43%, to 51%. With the additional processing power, his command limit increased to 18. The two new command limit slots were filled with another pair of drones, which went to work on the salvage once they left the fabricator.


    Next in his integration progress was finding the second main gun turret. Like the first turret, this one was only a mount and turret mechanism, no actual weapon. This turret had taken more damage than the other and would require quite a few repairs before it was functional again. Repairs for the forward turret were set as a low priority. Without guns to mount inside them, it made little sense to waste time and resources there when the rest of his ship was in such dire shape.


    Just before he reached the bow section that had been sheared off, Watkins ran into one more key component of his ship. It was the shield generator. Knowledge of how it functioned and how he could operate it was pulled from Watkins’ core. When activated, the shield generator would project a protective bubble of energy around his vessel.


    It would absorb both kinetic, and beam-based weapon damage from lasers and such. The shields had a limited capacity and when too much damage was taken in too short a time, they would overload and go inactive to prevent damage to the shield generator’s components. His shield generator resembled two wings jutting out from the side of his hull. The two generators would overlap their protection, one taking up the slack when the other was overloaded and went offline.


    Sadly, only one of the shield generator wings had survived the destruction of his ship. The surviving generator wing was damaged but should be repairable. Depending on how bad the damage was, he may need more shield research completed. A quick check of both his and LANI’s database showed that he lacked the necessary schematics to rebuild the missing shield generator from scratch, but having this partial section of the shield generator to examine would help them fill in the gaps.


    The only research module he currently had was almost done with its current project, but it would still be a while before shield generator research made its way into the front of the queue.


    Research Module 1 has completed its current task. Repair Drones, Level 1, can now be constructed. The schematic for these new drones is now uploaded into the universal fabricator.


    Research Module 1 is awaiting further commands.