by Dean Henegar
“It seemed just like a moment to me. Was there anything urgent going on? If not, I’m afraid I’ll need to spend some time trying to figure out what exactly has changed and how those changes will affect us all,” Slater advised. After assuring them that he wasn’t going to zone out for a week again, he began to explore his new self.
The first change was to his ship. He could feel the nanobots—or lack thereof—in his hull. The ones that remained were completely his, but they would never permeate the ship to the extent that the ones controlled by the council had. His loss of nanobot density was somewhat offset by an increased connection to his drones and MOBS. He could now place his consciousness inside one and direct it as if it were an extension of his own body. Being able to manually control his drones meant that the humans would no longer have to send their flying disc out to follow his MOBS when exploring.
Slater tried to look in on his research to see how it had changed—only to find that it was gone. The whole interface that let him know about his level, his research progress, the notifications . . . it was all gone. He began to panic; how could he upgrade the ship and make his way back to human space? Slater had gained his desired freedom, but the cost was the loss of the organized reference points he had enjoyed so far. Lacking specified research nodes, Slater attempted to upgrade things more directly. Moving his consciousness into the engineering console, he got to work.
First, he tried to link into an existing system, specifically the newly installed sensor array. He felt the system around him and could sense where things were correct and where the drones had made mistakes. As he visualized how the install should work, the pattern revealed itself in his mind, and he was able to direct a party of five drones to make the corrections. When they finished, he would find out if the whole thing worked. Strangely, the old components for the targeting scanner were strewn about the compartment, wherever there was room. The entire place was packed to the ceiling with the old cast-off gear.
Slater tried to order the drones to salvage the components. A force moved out and over the components, and he could feel what the problem was as they tried to work. Before, his vessel’s nanobots had been able to store any salvage in the impossibly dense hull. Now, his hull was only slightly denser than that of a normal vessel. The remaining nanobots inside his hull were incredibly efficient and could repair any damage to his hull, given enough time, but they no longer could store excess salvage. Looking about the various compartments, he could see where irregular chunks of material had been laid out; the salvage stored inside his hull had been released into any unused open space on his ship. Thankfully, none of the debris had been dropped in the human spaces, so he didn’t have to deal with crushed crew members.
He needed a place to store the raw salvage. Coming up with a plan on the fly, Slater zoomed in on the compartment holding Illissa. Her cell took up only a small amount of space, leaving over two-thirds of the room empty. He selected a corner of the room and was able to designate that as salvage storage. Given orders they could now complete, the drones got to work. Thankfully, they didn’t just drag hunks of the old sensor array over; they instead processed the salvage into brick-sized units of material that were easily stored. When they finished, the area he had designated for storage was half-full. Slater would need to expand his ship just to store all the raw materials waiting for him on the attached vessels. In the meantime, he ordered the drones to clean up the other compartments and store the salvage here, designating all the space—save for a path to Illissa’s prison—as a storage zone.
When he thought about expanding his vessel, Slater found that he could pull up schematics for several ships. The database on the Tuxpam had been uploaded into him, and he now possessed much of that knowledge in his core. He could feel that some of the data was damaged and some had just been very limited to start with; a cargo vessel didn’t need many of the things Slater had hoped to find. What he did find was a large portion of the ship’s target-classification system. Inside that portion of the database were the basic designs and layouts for most human warships and civilian vessels. The information wasn’t all that detailed—he was sure the humans didn’t want an enemy to find it—but there was enough for him to copy the basic designs, filling out any missing bits with focused research. Finding combat-tested designs for his new ship upgrade was exactly what he needed.
“Lieutenant Camden, I’m going to need to expand my vessel and I’ve found some information on current human warships. A lot has changed since the Franklin first sailed. My original vessel was essentially a few cobbled-together weapons systems slapped onto an ore hauler. I know things will have improved in the last century or so I’ve been out of action. Can you take a look at these with me and help me decide which one we should go with?” Slater asked.
“Certainly, sir. I’m no expert on naval warfare, but I’ve seen enough and heard enough to give you basics. We’re kind of small. What size of vessel are you considering?” Camden asked while looking around the derelict.
It was a good question. There was a limited amount of mass to work with, even with the added windfall of salvage that the remains of the two attached ships would provide. Slater fed the ship data over, starting with just the smallest human vessels.
The new ships’ designs were something to behold. They looked like vessels of war, unlike the Franklin. The classification system the navies of Earth had set up wasn’t too far off from what he was used to. From smallest to largest, the sizes of vessels were the corvette, frigate, destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battleship, dreadnaught, and super-dreadnaught. There were other spinoff ships specialized for certain tasks, such as minelayers and minesweepers, a stealthy scout vessel, and even a small carrier. The average corvette-class ship displacement was around double the size of the original Franklin. There were at least a dozen variants used by the various Earth factions.
“Based on our mass and what we have access to with the Tuxpam and the gnomish ship, I think we need to stay with something corvette-sized. There are a few different designs. Which have proven most effective against the other races?” Slater asked.
“I know the United States went with a version more focused on escort duty that might fit. If we’re looking at all-around effectiveness, I’ve heard good things about the Flower-class corvettes from the UK’s Royal Navy,” Camden advised.
Slater perused the different designs. The Russians’ design was intriguing; they had shoehorned in an extra main battery at the expense of better missile defense. The U.S. design and the Flower-class design from the UK were similar. The Americans had ended up scrapping the offensive missile battery for a battery of point-defense missiles. Slater thought the Flower-class was the most well-rounded design, if not the most belligerently named.
“I think I agree with the Flower-class as a basis for our new buildout. Of course, I’m going to keep the name Franklin for my ship. Give me some time to fiddle around with the design, and hopefully the drones can get started on changing us into a real ship of war,” Slater said, excited at the possibilities. He still didn’t have many of the necessary components, and his “corvette” would be moved about by a simple maneuvering thruster for now. Without the restraints of the leveling system, who knew what he might accomplish? Getting the ship’s hull and basic structure laid out was key. Then he could zero in on trying to make the various components a warship needed. Unlike many of the other tasks he had been forced to do since his conversion, this was going to be fun.
— 4 —
Slater dug down into the corvette schematic, his core attempting to fill in some of the missing details. Given that he was a derelict, he could also make several modifications. His chosen ship design sported a powerful drive system that gave it a strong acceleration profile. Since any drive system designed by Slater would be powered by his core, he didn’t need to include fuel storage or many of the smaller components associated with maintaining the drives. He would thus be able to use any freed-up space for storing salvage, adding
additional armor, or even creating more amenities for his crew.
In addition to the main drive unit, four maneuvering thrusters were placed around the ship. The thruster could be adjusted, allowing the nozzle to change its thrust vector in several different directions; agile maneuvering was a defining trait of this vessel type. Slater approved of including all four of the maneuvering thrusters in his own final build, setting aside the original design’s fuel storage compartments as additional room for salvage.
The ship’s main armaments comprised a twin-mounted railgun turret set at the fore of the ship. Two independent point-defense railguns were placed port and starboard so at least one could come to bear on attacking missiles or small craft at any given time. By careful maneuvering, he could keep both point-defense guns on target until attacking missiles or craft were almost on top of the Franklin. A pair of hatches just before the main engines held missile launchers. He would need to develop missiles, something he planned to do once the layout of the ship was completed. All the Flower-class weapons systems, including the missile mounts, were kept for his build. The existing armament was logically organized and had ample storage for the railgun rounds. Missiles were bulky, and the ship could only hold a pair in the launchers, with two additional reloads for each tube, both of which were housed in an armored magazine. Having the missile launchers so close to the engine compartment, not to mention his core room, was a bit unnerving, but the overall design included blowout panels to direct any catastrophic failures out into space.
Crew space for sixty-five crew members was placed about the ship, and a single medium-sized compartment was used as a galley to feed the sailors in shifts. There was a recreation and exercise room for the crew to use, as well as communal shower and restroom facilities. Slater left all the crew areas as they were, the naval board having arranged them in the most efficient manner possible when the ship was first designed. He would store some of his MOBS in the unused crew areas, at least until he had a better idea of how he wanted to set up the ship’s internal defenses.
The design of the Flower-class ships included two deck levels. The upper deck housed most of the crew areas, compartments for the weapons systems, and the general maintenance and repair shops. The lower deck contained the ship’s stores and fuel supply, the combat information center (CIC), the jump drive, and the marine barracks. The rear third of the ship was taken up by the drives and the missile silos, along with ammo storage for the ship’s weapons.
Slater chose the CIC for his core room, moving it aft and just in front of the missile and engine spaces. He would house his humans in the area set aside for the ship’s marine component, expanding the space into six individual compartments instead of a single larger barracks. Each compartment was given its own shower and bathroom, allowing his humans as much privacy and comfort as he could. They would have to travel to the upper deck in order to use the mess facilities and the recreation areas, but that shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.
The upper-deck plans already took into consideration the need to defend against boarders. Ongoing conflict and the types of foes humanity faced had guided the overall design of the ship. There was a single main passageway leading from the boarding hatches at the bow of the vessel—one each on the port and starboard sides. The main passage took several twists and turns, never giving invaders a straight path for very long. Each of the compartments built off the main passage had been constructed with defense in mind. The internal defenses included sections of floor that could be lifted upright to provide cover as well as gun ports that could be used to fire on invaders as they progressed down the ship.
The main passage itself had several hatches, creating natural choke points. At these chokepoints, mounting brackets had been installed into the floor, allowing the crew to set up a defensive barricade, along with a pintle mount for a heavy weapon. The design was just about perfect for a derelict. Any invaders would have to fight their way through a gauntlet of fire just to make it to the lower decks. Once there, his humans would provide a second layer of defense before his core room. The original design had several hatches leading to the second deck, but Slater sealed off all but one.
Once boarders reached the hatch to the second level—which was placed at the aft of his vessel—they would be faced with a narrow corridor leading them toward the bow and the human areas. They would then have to fight their way back down the length of the ship to reach the core room. A potential problem would be that his ship’s hull and the walls of the corridors were no longer impervious to attack. In theory, invaders could use some method to just cut their way through the compartments and take a more direct route to Slater’s core.
Should invaders try to cut their way directly toward the core, they would be subject to attacks by his MOBS the whole time. Any force that was strong enough to hold off all his MOBS and cut directly to Slater would probably kill him no matter what route it took through his ship.
Putting aside thoughts and fears of potential enemies, Slater concentrated on modifying the ship’s design to better fit his needs; he wouldn’t need many of the minor systems. The ship’s cameras and internal sensors were replaced by the views he could still gain through his nanobots. His nanobots and drones could also cover for several other systems, including damage control, life support, and power conduits, allowing him more flexibility in his build.
Biomass was something he had forgotten about, causing Slater to order a drone to find out what happened to the biomass that had been stored in his hull. Among the salvage debris scattered about the ship, some blobs of greenish paste were found. This was the biomass that the ship had extruded when most of the nanobots died off. The drones were able to gather the goop up and form it into solid green bricks that stored much more efficiently. Zooming in on one of the green bricks, Slater could see that it also held liquid material in the center; that was where all the water was stored. He would keep the corvette’s plumbing system design, which the drones would fill up with liquid once the ship was complete.
Air didn’t seem to be a problem, as even his depleted nanobot density proved to be more than enough to maintain a perfect atmosphere. They were also able to regulate the environment, keeping the ship’s internal temperatures within a comfortable range for his crew. Later, he would need to run some tests to see if the nanobots’ ability to alter temperature and atmosphere could be turned into a weapon against boarders. He was also not able to affect the gravity on his ship. His core generated a field that was consistent with Earth-normal gravity, but he had no control over it other than to turn it off or change where “down” was. Changing the direction of the gravitational pull wasn’t a fast process, so creating traps that hurled enemies up and smashed them into the top of a hatchway was out.
He moved the small brig from the lower deck to the top deck. Where the life-support system was once housed, there was enough space for eight cells. The location was perfect: the midway point on the top deck of the ship. Any prison breaks would have to fight through a swarm of his MOBS in either direction. With the overall layout of his ship complete, Slater decided it was time to learn how to research new things now that the council’s overlays were a thing of the past.
He figured the council had set up the intentionally clunky method of research as a mechanism to slow the development of a derelict. He could now view what had been going on behind the scenes as he researched items. It was easy for him to think of how he interacted with his derelict in a human manner. In fact, many of the ship’s functions were running in the background without needing his direct attention. It was similar to the process of breathing or the beating of his heart when he was alive; it happened if he didn’t focus on them.
What Slater had been doing actively in his engineering console was automated and running in the background of his consciousness during “research.” The research system had been just a way to quantify and allocate his processing power. Each research node had been assigned a bit of processing power that would work in the background
as he went about his day. The research was channeled and partitioned off by the council-controlled nanobots, forcing him to research a somewhat ridiculous progression of items.
His core level was just a representation of his overall power-production and computing potential. As he and his systems worked, the efficiency and structure of his core improved. When the improvements reached a certain point, he would need to go into standby mode as his core upgraded. This process took him offline and was one of the few things the system had accurately depicted. Slater created a percentage indicator to track his core upgrade progress, adding it to an information tab he could pull up when needed. The amount of time he had to go offline for his core upgrades was variable and based on how much was changing. He would now be able to see an estimated time he would be “out” while upgrading, allowing him to coordinate with the other humans the next time it happened. He didn’t know if he would still feel the same pressure and eventually be forced into an upgrade like before; he could only learn that when the time came.
Wanting to try out his new researching ability, Slater pulled up something he wanted to duplicate: in this case, it was the point-defense railgun. He had learned a basic schematic for the weapon when his drones pulled it from the Tuxpam. The point-defense gun lay on the deck of the dead ship, waiting for him to install it on the Franklin. Inspecting the incomplete design, Slater slowly added some of his subconscious processing power into figuring out what was missing. He could now watch the progress of research, if he so desired.
The incomplete schematic floated in his field of view, and he began to add more and more processing power, watching as the design began to change. Since Slater “knew” what he wanted, he was able to subconsciously direct the research in the desired direction. Additions and deletions were being constantly made to the schematic as his core-powered brain began to solve the problem of how to re-create a point-defense railgun.
