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“We jump in five.” Alex’s voice filled the bridge, drawing everyone’s focus.
It had been a busy few hours since the capy-were-its were found in engineering.
That had been a bit disruptive to John’s upgrades, but he’d managed to get quite a few things done.
Privately, John had confided in Alex that he felt a bit like a passenger in his own body for some of the work, given just how much the various tasks were reliant on the System granted, temporary skills and implanted memories.
He was doing what he could to learn as he let himself move along with that knowledge, but it wasn’t the most fun for the man.
Kaylee had successfully and fully made the ship hers, which had the added benefit of giving her the ability to link many of her somewhat vague abilities through the proper ship systems to enhance and give greater depth to both.
One side effect, however, was that she no longer got that feedback.
Grant was quite happy, as he now believed that he could have detected the capy-were-its and would be able to do so for any similar boarders in the future.
Despite his overt exuberance, there was still a quietness about the man, but given all else that was going on, Alex hadn’t had time to dig in further.
Pilar had been… less than pleased by her husband’s injury, and after not-so-quietly raging against the incident, she’d followed her husband’s suggestion and gotten the bio-clean-up as a sort of ‘pampering’. She’d come out looking a few years younger, and with an increased rage at what had happened. John had sighed and covertly apologized, claiming his own foolishness. Apparently, Pilar had been mellowing a bit with age, and that seemed to have regressed a bit. Still, he said it with a wry smile and clear love in his eyes, so Alex didn’t really worry about them. Everyone else, however? Well, Pilar had literally burned off some of her emotion by ashing a not-so-reasonable portion of the nearby asteroids… So, there was that.
Speaking of those asteroids, Audry had mined a full three ‘troves’ that Natasha directed them to while their jump drive spun up. Her report was quite favorable for their haul, which helped lift the mood just a bit.
Juba took over running the sparring for everyone this cycle as Grant was a bit off, and Alex joined even though it was his second intense session. He’d only done hand-to-hand work this time, but it was still good practice.
He really needed to incorporate his renewed dadao, but that had felt like too heavy a lift for the moment. I’ll sleep after this jump… and the fight. Yeah. That’s a good plan. Sleep later, train now.
Other than that, Alex did his utmost to keep his mind busy, so it couldn’t dwell on recent, unpleasant revelations and forbidden memories. As such, he took some time to practice his mana manipulation with the tri-ring, and he repaired his greatcoat with HP, not Life.
As the wool coat—or whatever fantasy material equivalent—was made of natural fibers, it was quite inexpensive to repair using his Life Manipulation skill, and the result was a return to form for the garment.
The magics repeated throughout were quite interesting in their own right, once again, seeming to contain a plethora of extra and superfluous pieces, despite them being meticulously and precisely constructed.
Deeply investigating everything he could was a great distraction, and better yet, it was helping him develop his Speed Reading, because a key part of that was developing the ability to skim unneeded or less important sections. System wrought magic had a lot of that.
He chuckled, not that he’d seen any other kind.
It really helped that System made magics were always incredibly clearly laid out. Even when it was too fine for him to read, it was just that minuteness that was an issue, not any sort of sloppiness.
Lenka, of all of the Initiates, seemed the most content, simply working through the various systems under her command and adding her own personal flair and magics. She’d also undergone the clean-up, but as she’d been in her late twenties to begin with, the outward effects were minimal.
Natasha had been trying to hone her use of her various sensing skills—especially that of Detect Trove—and she’d been able to shift it to the point that she could detect when multiple troves in close proximity were the ‘most valuable’ rather than simply feeling the singular such trove.
It was a small step but an important one. In theory, in time, she should be able to find everything of value within her range and know roughly what that value entailed for each discrete location. But that was likely a long way off, to the point that she said she didn’t expect such before they left this second tutorial in roughly a year’s time.
Alex didn’t know how she could get such an accurate guess at the progression of her skill, but he didn’t see any reason to disbelieve her, let alone argue about it.
John and Grant were slated to go through the bio-clean-up process after this next jump and the fallout there-in, whatever that turned out to be.
In that vein, “Three.”
They’d decided to hunt pirates, and Alex would be at the helm. Of course I will. I’m the Helmsman.
“Two.”
Two ships with a crew complement of five each.
If they could board, then Juba would be doing the heavy lifting in taking the enemy ships.
Alex shifted into flight mode, settling into the sensation of being the ship.
“One.”
Each of their opponents would be smaller, lighter, more maneuverable, and outfitted for combat. Even so, the Innominate was geared up and ready for such a fight, their ship more heavily armored and equipped than the enemy.
“Jump.”
The Innominate became an island of normality amidst chaos, magic, and nonsense.
This time, they arrived precisely fifteen-point-eight-three-seven seconds after they jumped out, and again, Alex had no idea how he knew that.
Per Kaylee’s upgrades, Alex had been able to be a bit more precise with the jump, so they didn’t drop straight into danger this time around.
As before, they arrived with shields up, and per agreement, they also had all the weaponry fully primed.
The first to speak was Grant—his voice coming to Alex as he floated in empty space—and he sounded focused, as if straining to read incredibly small font in low light. “No detected breaches or borders. All internal systems are green and clear of danger, including all of Kaylee’s enhancements.”
Alex felt all around himself, finding bits of debris, traces of magic, and… not much else.
He heard Natasha click her tongue. “So, I believe I’ve detected the pirates, or at least a cache of their goods.”
Pilar’s voice came next. “Good, where? I don’t want to hold these guns primed for much longer.”
The Russian sighed. “On the far side of the system.”
Alex sighed as well. “Of course they are.”
A ripple of chuckles went through the crew. Natasha sent an overlay to Alex. “There. Not sure if it’s the pirates themselves or a base, or something else, but whichever it is, we’ll profit from investigating.”
“Understood.” He paused for a moment. “I’m going to warp, which means a delay on the jump spin-up. Is that acceptable to y’all?”
Grant chuckled. “Your southern’s showing.”
Alex grinned thinking back on his meeting facilitations of the past. “Maybe, but I don’t know. ‘Y’all’ is the perfect pronoun. Covers everything and everyone sapient in a non-offensive and inclusive manner.”
That got a few chuckles, a few groans, and at least one tsk of mild irritation.
“Regardless, I’m taking that as a yes.” He reached out and felt the refined levi-stone core following his imparted training.
He poured the ship’s power into the core, allowing the natural magics of the levi-stone to alter the mana.
To his sense and understanding, it was like adding an accent to the susurrations that he heard. In this case, that accent was ‘gravity’.
There was more to it than that, but he simply didn’t have the senses to detect the nuance.
And increasing my sense’s fidelity rises higher and higher on the list. He considered for a moment.
What if he could treat it like a mundane sense and impose a gradient on fidelity? In that way, he might be able to increase both the range and sensitivity at the same time, or at least in conjunction… The idea was worth considering.
Space rippled around the ship, beginning to slide around the Innominate, the vessel once more seeming to lock in place as the rest of the universe moved by.
Since Alex’s amplified spherical sense extended past the warp bubble around the ship, he could vaguely feel the currents of dimensionality itself flowing past, their ship streaking across the system.
He was a bit enamored by the process, which was likely a core reason that he didn’t notice the attack coming until it popped the warp field.
The magics of the laser spoke to him of light and gravity even as they barely missed the ship itself.
Alex stumbled in a metaphorical sense, only his advanced kinestetics—translated through the ship’s systems—allowed everything to stay properly oriented and prevented the ship from entering an odd tumble.
Even so, Alex’s Stress-Interoception positively screamed through his mind as, all across the ship, the frame twisted and rippled, barely staying within spec.
Apparently, a violent cessation of warp caused a backlash onto the infrastructure of the ship, and that is precisely what had happened.
The lance of what seemed to be condensed light continued through the space until it was nearly a quarter mile behind them before cutting off, the enemy’s aim sufficient to hit the moving target which they’d been, but not so accurate as to track with them as they were thrown from the popped warp-sphere.
“Automated defense buoy, tracking toward our position. With that and ordinance travel time, expect continued fire within ten seconds.” Natasha’s voice was calm and collected.
“Our shields are still experiencing gravimetric shear, apparently. Down to fifty percent, but I’m working on it.” Lenka sounded strained, not panicked.
Pilar was growling again. “Can’t target anything with our ship tumbling erratically!"
Alex let his instincts guide him, flicking bits of mana around the internal matrices, first bringing their spin under control, then flipping them around so their main guns pointed back at the small hostile bit of magical technology.
“Thanks.” Her gratitude was only tinged with a bit of sarcasm, but Alex didn’t bother commenting.
Instead, he focused on the lance of fire that thrust out from before him.
Most of the attack was the ship’s too-advanced magics, making them so complex that he couldn’t really understand what was going on, but this particular attack was drawn out for long enough that he was able to dig through the minute text to find Pilar’s magics at the center, and he almost burst out laughing.
It was an oversimplification, but what he found was the equivalent of ‘very quite pretty fire. This fire is made of heat, lots and lots and lots and lots of very, very, very, very hot heat.’
Effective? Yes.
Full of meaning? Unquestionably.
Very… well put together? Not at all.
I see. This is how the System has been working. When someone aims for more power, they just slap on ‘very’ or the equivalent.
It reminded him a bit of how many folks dealt with AI pre-system, being overly simplistic and emphasizing things repeatedly to try to make them more influential to the end result.
All in all, the concept was worth considering.
He wasn’t just trying to ensure he had no mental free space.
No.
Not at all.
This was perfectly valid training.
Regardless of the eloquence of the magics involved, the little defensive buoy didn’t get off another shot before Pilar’s attack erased it. Unfortunately, that still left them with another problem.
They’d only crossed about half the distance to their target, and this was enemy territory… How many more of those buoys could they expect?
Alex sighed. This was going to be a royal pain, wasn’t it…