Chapter 30. Debris and the Dead.
Their course toward the largest chunk of debris brought them closer to the system, so Watkins wouldn’t lose much, if any, progress toward their original goal of reaching the remains of the jump point station. Their slow approach also gave Watkins time to get his research efforts back on track. With the number of potential threats out there, he needed more upgrades to his vessel.
The conflict with Lani had caused everything to come to a halt. It turned out that if the research modules sat idle, any previous progress on an uncompleted project would regress. It was an odd feeling, and the data was just drifting away slowly like vapor when the module wasn’t actively working.
Main guns, level 1 was reactivated, and the second research module had just started on Sensors, level 1. Most of the research on the sensors was lost, as he’d only started that after Lani’s upgrade research was completed, but it made sense to continue with it. There were other threats out there and he needed to spot them before he was noticed.
He also looked over the two new laser batteries that the drones had completed during his struggle with Lani. They were as the schematic predicted, larger versions of his point defense lasers. Not wanting to test fire them and announce his presence to anyone lurking nearby, Watkins’ core estimated they were 23% more powerful than the point defense laser, and could fire for longer, one second bursts before powering down for a five second cooling cycle.
It was better than nothing, but not much. Hopefully, the next level of the main gun research would be a more noticeable upgrade for him. For the first time, several of his drones were idle. The ship repairs, what he could accomplish of them with the existing material, were complete. He ordered the idle drones to do cleanup duty. His ship had already been swept for any useable debris, but he could feel it was a bit filthy by his standards.
A point or two of salvage might be gleaned from the efforts, but it was simply make-work until they reached the drifting debris. There were also minor repairs to be done on the interior, nothing major, and nothing that would use up too many resources, but fine-tuning things like lighting fixtures, ventilation, and similar systems needed some attention and adjustment.
Main gun research was 71% complete, and sensors were at 14% when they finally arrived at the drifting chunk of LV1 that he’d targeted. His sensors couldn’t detect any life signs, and he also didn’t notice any trace of the bizarre void creatures lurking in the wreckage. It was simply a scorched and battered chunk of the very aft of the ship, including part of a main drive thruster. Other than that, he had no idea if he’d find anything else of interest.
Using the same method they’d used before, a brave repair drone made the leap between his vessel and the debris, carrying a line to secure it. More of his drones stood ready to assist, but first, the single drone was required to do a thorough inspection of the vessel to determine if there were any threats lurking in the wreckage.
With all the odd things he’d seen since his new life began, Watkins was going to err on the side of caution when exploring the potential salvage. Thankfully, the drone didn’t report anything out of the ordinary, and there was one partially intact structure mounted on the exterior hull. It was half of a rectangular device, and he detected trace amounts of solid propellant that had been vaporized in the explosion.
“Lani, if you’re not too busy, could you take a look at this and see what you make of it?” Watkins asked. He could feel Lani’s attention shift to the device as she considered what it was.
“I’m not sure, but given the residue, perhaps it’s some sort of short-ranged weapon or emergency maneuvering booster? Whatever it is, when your drones break it down, you should get a better idea of its purpose,” Lani added.
With the exterior examined, the drone began to make a sweep through the inside the wreckage. There wasn’t much of an interior space, given the reinforced drive mountings and the armored section of hull around them, so the drone didn’t take long to complete its examination. Nothing lived aboard the ship, and no creature or threat lurked in the cramped confines of the vessel.
There was a rather gruesome discovery in a partially sealed section of the engine room. The bodies of a half dozen small crewmembers were floating inside. Whether it was the force of the blast, or an atmosphere leak that killed them, Watkins couldn’t say. It was odd, he knew his old human self would have felt revulsion over the discovery, but his new mind merely saw the corpses as a source of biomass. Perhaps they had enough of the remains for him to pick up a new MOBS pattern.
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“My database is lacking on what species those bodies are from. When we do finally reach the research station, we should have a more exhaustive library on the various known species in the universe. Maybe after you process them, we’ll get some additional information on what these were,” Lani said as she also watched the drone’s progress.
“I think it’s clear of any threats. Let’s reel in this fish and start to harvest it,” Watkins ordered. His drones got to work, traveling along the line his recon drone had trailed behind it. Each of the new arrivals also brought lines to help secure the wreckage. Once anchored with a dozen lines, the debris was slowly pulled closer to Watkins.
His ship felt a slight bump when the debris came into contact with him, but the drones had done a good job, and the impact was negligible. Where his available drones had to content themselves with just cleaning up aboard his ship, now they had more work than they could handle. Of his 22 available drones, 15 were placed on salvage duty, and 7 were assigned to resume the rebuilding of the bow section.
A quick estimate showed that there wasn’t quite enough salvage to rebuild the missing bow section completely, but when he was done, the ship should be over 90% complete. That was taking into consideration that he would retain a sizeable reserve of salvage on hand to use for repairs or construction of any new upgrades he managed to research.
While his drones went to work, Watkins used his scanners to seek out any other sizeable debris that might still be nearby. He found that he could focus the scanners into smaller sections of space to reduce any signature that a far-off vessel might detect. Everything he could detect nearby were just much smaller pieces of the two ships that had been destroyed. Those pieces were rapidly spreading out into space as the force of the blast caused them to drift away from the point of the explosion.
He could spend time…days, perhaps weeks or months, tracking down the various debris out there. That might give him enough to fully repair his vessel, but he felt that there was now a bit more urgency to accomplish his goals. This system had much more traffic, and conflict, inside of it than they expected.
Lani had told him the system was out in the middle of nowhere and other than the supply ships arriving back when the station was in full operation, they had no visitors. Something had changed while they had been drifting out in space on their ruined vessel, and Watkins planned to find out exactly who was in this system, and what threat they might be to his control over it.
“I think we should push into the system and investigate jump point two rather than chase down any of the smaller bits of debris. What are your thoughts?” Watkins asked.
“Well, I hate to go in when we’re not in peak form, but I agree, we would be dithering around to pick up scraps when someone with hostile intent might show up. At least at the jump point, we are likely to find more salvage, and perhaps even tap into whatever sensor buoys that might still be functional,” Lani said.
Watkins didn’t think that they’d find much of anything operational. From Lani’s description of things when he was snatched up from Earth, the facilities in the system were on their last legs. More time had passed since then, and that would only mean further degradation of anything that might remain operational.
Still, operational or not, the two jump point stations and the orbital research station would have what they needed, and allow them to check on their missing data, not to mention Watkins’ missing crew. He tried to remain hopeful that at least some of his crew had survived, after all, he was still functional, even if not quite the same man he had been before. Watkins would also have to keep an eye on Lani whenever they finally arrived at the research station’s remains.
Accessing the data there could unlock another attempt at subverting Lani. He was confident that they could resist another attack like the one she had been forced to make earlier, but he would still be on his guard. Instead of worrying about it now, Watkins carefully activated his drives, resuming their journey toward jump point two as his drones slowly processed the newfound salvage and rebuilt him.
A new notice appeared as they worked.
Main gun research is now complete. You have 1 available research module. Do you wish to assign the module to a new project? Y/N.
Watkins pulled up the new schematic for his main guns. This time, the weapon was larger, and the beam projector looked like a respectable gun barrel. A quick check of the weapon stats showed it was now double the power of the smaller point defense laser, and the down time between shots was reduced to four seconds.
He quickly pulled some of the drones off salvage operations, assigning the maximum of five that could work on a main gun without hampering each other. The upgrades consisted of tearing down the old weapon and rebuilding it into the new design. Watkins would only do one gun at a time, even though it was slower, not wanting to leave himself defenseless if something showed up in the middle of the upgrades.
For his freed-up research module, Watkins decided it was finally time to upgrade one of his MOBS into something more formidable than his repair drones. The question was, which of his MOBS should get the upgrade?