Chapter 22. Integration Complete.


    Watkins continued to expand his influence across the hull as the drones worked to upgrade themselves. LANI was also slowly being repaired. After a time, Watkins’ efforts reached the forward area of the ship. In the bow, he found his ship had been sheared off with jagged damage just like that of his engine room.


    There was supposed to be a torpedo room, but all but the first few feet of that compartment were gone. Along with the two torpedo tubes, he was also missing the maneuver thrusters that were placed on the bow. At least the bow thrusters were no different than the ones mounted aft, and they were something he could easily replicate once the structure of the ship was repaired.


    With the bow integrated, at least what was left of it, Watkins felt almost complete. His core was running even smoother with the addition of more of the microscopic devices that permeated the structure. While he felt almost complete, he wasn’t quite there, a good section of his aft and bow were sheared off, but with the basic schematics he had inside his database, he could rebuild them.


    The main drives, torpedo tubes, and other items couldn’t be replicated yet. At least he would have the overall structure of his ship completely whole. Watkins knew that he could not only rebuild his vessel how it had originally been designed but he could also improve upon what his original designers had envisioned.


    While Watkins reveled in completing his ship integration, he noticed the point defense laser was back online. Power began to flow into the weapon once more and he ran in internal check to see if it was stable. The last thing he wanted was to get off a few shots, only to have the weapon melt down again.


    “LANI, the point defense laser is online, I’m going to get back to work on the void creature,” Watkins advised.


    “Good, the sooner we can bring that salvage in to be harvested, the better off we’ll be,” Lani said.


    His functions check on the point defense laser was showing all green lights, so he targeted the debris, specifically, anywhere he could detect part of the void creature’s mass. Pulses of energy lanced into the corpse of the creature. For the first few shots, Watkins expected the monster to spring back to life, but as more and more of its mass was burned away, he began to believe that the monster was truly defeated.


    A portion of his mind controlled the point defense turret, while Watkins took in the improvements that adding the rest of his ship had on his core.


    Vessel: Pending.


    Vessel Core: Jesse Watkins.


    Hull Durability: Unknown.


    Core Processing Power: 62%.


    Core Durability: 100%.


    Systems:


    <ol>


    <li> Level 0 auxiliary processing server housing the LANI system: 46%</li>


    <li> Level 0 universal fabricator: 100%. </li>


    <li> Level 0 reprocessor: 100%. </li>


    </ol>


    Crew: none.


    Core controlled units:


    Command Limit: 18/20.


    <ol>


    <li> Simple repair drone, Level 0 (15). </li>


    <li> Mutated bilge rat, Level 0 (3).</li>


    <li> Yendax Beetle, Level 0 (0). </li>


    </ol>


    Resources:


    <ol>


    <li> Salvage: 281. </li>


    <li> Biomass: 89.</li>


    </ol>


    His processing power was now up to 62%. Watkins had hoped for more, but he realized that large parts of his ship were still missing, and much of the rest of his vessel was still heavily damaged. The core wouldn’t hit 100% until his hull was completely rebuilt and he was repaired, both inside and out.


    LANI had also bumped up a couple of points from where she had been the last time he’d checked. The level one drone was still working on repairs for her, so he hoped she would improve further. There was supposedly a lot of data held inside her server, and the more she was repaired the more she could access for them.Stolen novel; please report.


    His command capacity was up to twenty, a gain of two. Additional drones were ordered, though Watkins wondered if he should pursue upgrading some MOBS before too long. For now, repairs and salvage were going to be his main focus, but later, having something more durable than a drone or a level zero mutant rat would likely be necessary.


    The point defense turret stopped firing as Watkins noticed there were no more visible sections of the monster still clinging to the debris. There was likely more infesting the interior of the debris, but there had been no further reaction, which satisfied Watkins that the threat was negated. He would still use caution with the debris and began to plan on a way to safely harvest the resources there.


    He didn’t want his ship attached to the debris until he was sure it was completely safe. To deal with it, he had a drone use some salvage to create a strong cable. Securing one end of the cable to his drone, he had it attach the other end securely to his hull.


    The cable wasn’t just welded to the hull, it was placed in clamp that Watkins could cut free at any time. With the cable secure, he maneuvered closer and had the drone leap off the hull and drift toward the debris. The two newly created drones also arrived to help. A total of three cables were created, and the drones flung themselves at the debris.


    It took over a dozen tries before one of the drones finally landed on target. For all his processing power, as soon as the drone left his ship, the connection frayed, which hampered Silas’ calculations. Once the successful drone landed, it secured the cable to the debris and began to explore.


    With one cable secure, the other two drones used it to climb over and secure their own cables. Having three drones working, the chunk of debris was examined. As Watkins suspected, more of the creature had been packed into several spaces inside the debris. Before they examined the wreckage further, the monster had to be dealt with. All three drones began to cut and pry the monster’s body out of the debris.


    As they worked lose chunks of the monster, it slowly turned into vapor. At first, Watkins thought it was a fine dust, but he could detect nothing remaining of the monster. It was as if once the body was destroyed, it could no longer exist in the real universe and was pulled back into the void.


    With part of his focus watching the trio of drones’ work, he looked in on the existing salvage operations. The chunk of station that had impaled his ship was slowly shrinking as the drones broke it down for reprocessing. Bricks of salvage material were stockpiled in the fabrication compartment, ready and waiting for him to use.


    Before Watkins got to work on rebuilding, he wanted the salvage impaling his ship completely recovered. He had a total of thirteen drones working on harvesting, and of those, half were now upgraded to the level one drones. The new drones seemed to function at least 15% better than the level zero versions. In addition, their storage capacity was 10% larger, allowing them to gather more material before needing to haul it to the reprocessor.


    As his drones worked, Watkins planned out the rebuilding efforts. He’d start with the aft of the ship. Once the creature was cleared out of the floating debris, he could get a look at what remained of the main drive on what had once been the engine compartment of his ship.


    The plan was to reattach the section, if possible, and repair it from there. Most of his drones would be working on that task, but a smaller team would be working inside the ship to fully repair whatever they could inside. There was also more salvage laying around the ship, but it was easier and more efficient to harvest the large piece impaling the ship and the drones working on internal repairs could sweep up as they worked.


    It took several hours before the trio of drones had scoured the entire chunk of floating debris. As far as Watkins could tell, not a bit of the creature remained. Now, he maneuvered the debris, so it was positioned to the aft of his ship. This process was made easier due to the cables securing the debris. His drones simply disconnected the cables one at a time and reconnected them to hold the debris securely to the aft of his ship.


    The damage was extensive, and the one surviving drive was only a partial piece of the rear thruster. It wasn’t enough to rebuild it, but the information his drones gathered should help him create a schematic for the drive. Unlike his ship on Earth, or the information on the starships he had in his database, the drives on his ship were smaller, but much more powerful.


    He was providing the power for the drives, and that negated the need for a separate power generation device, or the need to store fuel. There was also no need for a separate compartment for things like life support or inertial dampeners. Watkins considered his vessel a warship first and foremost, especially given the hostile threats he’d already encountered.


    Once he was completely repaired and upgraded, his ship could pack more firepower, speed, and armor than any similarly sized vessel should be able to. The only problem was that most of his data was at least a century out of date. Even a century was probably a conservative estimate, since from what LANI had mentioned, the station that had built him had been dormant and abandoned for an even longer period before he was ever pulled into the core.


    “Watkins, my repairs are complete, though we can do a lot more once the upgrade for my server has finished being researched,” LANI announced.


    “Do you feel better?” Watkins asked.


    “I’m not sure we really feel anything anymore, but yes, operating more efficiently has had a beneficial effect. Even better, I’ve unlocked some new schematics for us,” LANI said.


    “That’s great news, share what you’ve found,” Watkins asked, eager to see what LANI had discovered.