Chapter 23. Unlocking Research.
“These should help out with rebuilding our ship,” LANI said as she pushed over the schematics. Watkins’ core integrated them into his database, absorbing the knowledge in less than a second.
New Schematics Unlocked:
MOBS and Drones:
<ol>
<li> Kobold crewman, Level 0. </li>
</ol>
Ship’s Components:
<ol>
<li> Research Module, Level 0. </li>
</ol>
Ship’s Weapons:
<ol>
<li> Torpedo Launcher: Initial. </li>
</ol>
Ship’s Defenses:
<ol>
<li> Internal weapon hardpoint: Initial. </li>
</ol>
Propulsion and Drives:
<ol>
<li> Main propulsion unit, Level 0.</li>
<li> Maneuver thruster, Level 0. </li>
</ol>
“Interesting, what’s with the kobold? The name sounds familiar, and I think you’ve mentioned them before,” Watkins asked.
“A kobold is a small reptilian species that possess a modest intellect. They tend to be very aggressive and territorial. Also, they made up a large percentage of the pirates in this area. Of course, my data is centuries out of date. Have you humans encountered the kobold species before?” LANI asked.
“I’m not sure where I know the name and species from, that’s more data that’s been deleted from my memory to make room for core operations data. If we can create kobolds as MOBS, why not humans?” Watkins asked.
“We probably can, if we had enough data. Kobolds had been defeated and reprocessed many times by the council, but humans are something new and in addition to the jump point anomaly leading to your home system, they were a new species for us to research,” LANI said.
That was interesting to Watkins, not just the vague idea that he had heard about kobolds in his human life, it was the fact that this council, that had who knew how many species under its control, had never encountered humans before. LANI had said the jump point directly to his world was gone, and Watkins couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved at that. He wasn’t sure he wanted humanity’s home world accessible by whatever might make its way to Earth, especially after seeing those void creatures.
“We need to finish rebuilding our ship, then we can see about researching new things. From what we have available now, I think learning how to build another research module would be best. Once the research on your server is done, we’ll go with that,” Watkins decided.
“That seems like a good plan. I should warn you, though, after the research module is done, it may require a second pass to completely unlock level zero research for me. Until then, we have plenty of other work to do, and I’ll help out where I can,” LANI said.
“How will you be helping out?” Watkins asked, curious what else she might be able to do. LANI had helped when I was integrating the hull, maybe she’d be able to do something similar with the rebuilding efforts.
“I can work directly with a few of the drones, improving their efficiency by 15%. I know its not a huge difference, but the work needs to be done, and we might as well do as quickly as possible,” LANI offered.
“An extra 15% speed for some of our drones sounds great to me. I’m going to work on getting the aft section reinstalled,” Watkins said.
LANI made a few attempts and found that she could boost up to three of their drones at once. For now, while Watkins worked on the aft section, he had the improved drones handling salvage operations. They were steadily cutting down the chunk of station that impaled the ship, and piles of salvage were starting to stack up in the fabricator compartment.
They ended up pulling one drone to do nothing more than shuttle the newly formed salvage blocks near the engine room. Once the aft section was reattached, they were going to need a lot of resources to rebuild it back into working order. With everything else taken care of for the moment, Watkins had his drones begin reeling in the aft module debris.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
It was slow going, as he didn’t want to create more damage when section finally met his vessel. As the chunk of debris neared. Watkins could see that it wasn’t going to be a perfect fit. Much of the hull material had been bent and twisted, so when his ship finally clanged up against the aft section of debris, his drones had to work quickly to line things up as best they could.
“I’d say were still missing about 30-40% of the material, but we should have more than enough salvage on hand to fix this up,” Watkins said as the drones began their work.
Watching them work was odd. He could feel the connection to them, and knew it was his core giving them instructions on what to do, but it was all happening below his active consciousness. It was just as LANI had described it, his new body was like his flesh and blood one. Instead of breathing and his heart beating without conscious effort, so to were the efforts of his drones once he gave them orders.
Looking at all the work that needed to be done, Watkins bit the bullet and had his MOBS recycled. He hated ordering them to their demise, but they weren’t sentient and were just part of his system anyway. With the MOBS turned back into salvage and biomass, Watkins queued up more drones to join the workforce.
He divided up the workforce of 20 drones. 10 were assigned to rebuilding efforts on the aft section, 6 were working on salvaging the station debris, and the final 4 were assigned to work on repairs, haul salvage bricks into storage, and the cleanup of the ship’s interior. As the drones working on the aft section made progress, Watkins was able to integrate more and more of the debris into his vessel.
The more material he added, the better his core began to operate as the clusters of micro devices became part of him. The first objective after securing the aft section was to clear the area around the one and only maneuver thruster so he could adjust course and head back into the system.
One maneuver thruster wasn’t much, but it gave Watkins a sense of accomplishment to feel his vessel heading in the right direction. Even better, a second maneuver thruster on the aft section, the one that the void creature had been using, only needed some minor repairs before it too was adding its thrust to the efforts.
The main drives were offline, and major components were missing. He only had one of the ship’s two exhaust nozzle still attached, and his core data wasn’t currently sufficient to repair it. That was something that would have to wait for the research module to get to. For now, he’d make do with two small maneuver thrusters and do what he seemed to be doing a lot of lately, wait.
After a time, he felt his control over the aft section snap completely into place. There was a lot of work to still do, but he now felt better than he ever had since becoming a core. A quick check showed that his status had improved as all but the bow of the ship was part of him again.
Vessel: Pending.
Vessel Core: Jesse Watkins.
Hull Durability: 61%.
Core Processing Power: 71%.
Core Durability: 100%.
Command Limit: 20/22.
With the expanded Command Limit, another two drones were ordered. Watkins knew he needed to research more MOBS, but for now, he’d continue with the all-drone strategy. A quick check showed no threats looming on the sensor returns, so he felt comfortable going for a full construction effort.
With the addition of the aft section, his sensor range had also increased, but alas, unlike the aft section, there was no bow section of his vessel waiting to be recovered. At least that also meant there wasn’t another of the void creatures ready to attack. By unlocking more of his processing power, Watkins could feel the original ship design was now complete.
Even without a huge chunk of it floating nearby, Watkins was confident that he could rebuild the bow of his vessel from scratch. It was going to take time, and maybe more resources than he currently possessed, but he could do it. In addition, with the aft section complete, he had access to the second point defense laser hardpoint. One drone was pulled from rebuilding efforts to start building a new point defense laser.
It might not have been much as far as firepower, but it made Watkins feel good to double the number of weapons at his disposal. Sadly, he lacked even the ability to build the most basic version of his main guns, but had hope that when he further researched the point defense lasers, main gun options would unlock.
Torpedoes were going to take a while, and when Watkins thought about it, more information on starship combat unlocked in his core. He could see and feel the various ranges he could operate weapons systems at, and how effective the different weapon types were against the various opponents he might find out here.
Oddly enough, a space battle wasn’t that much different than a naval battle on the surface. Things just happened at greater distances and with much larger vessels and more firepower. Still, the principles remained the same, and Watkins could see why the station had chosen a human warship captain as a ship’s core. For now, Watkins was content with his new life, but he could feel something else simmering below the surface, a desire to find Earth and his home.
He was a starship, a warship, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. What could change was where he chose to sail. Putting around in some forgotten system wasn’t for him, he wanted to be home and stand ready to protect his world. To do that, he’d need more than a few maneuver thrusters and a pair of point defense lasers.