'Which way was it again?'

The drones' assembly is right after all the way up the android cube.

'Turns out I have magnetic boots for feet?'

Not exactly, my whole body is connected in some way to the metal walls thanks to the free WiFi. Never thought the internet could ever be so convenient.

‘OK which way is up and which is down again?'

You know what, I don't care, let's just go. Doing a 90 degree curve into another plane for walking feels weird, like I would fall... any second now... But I got used to it. I walk leisurely humming a tune, but going past a million folded human bodies hanging over my head gets creepy really fast.

‘Sanic, sanic’

I have no speed booster. But at least I can run for as long as I have the battery. It takes a while but i finally do another 90 degree turn. I only broke into a sweat when I would look up to see if anyone was looking at me, their heads between their legs was not a pretty sight at all. This hallway has no chambers, but some equipment for repairs, I think.

‘Why does it look so worn out?’

The drills and the edges of some tools look well-used, but most are so shiny they might as well be just decorative pieces.

'Anyways where were we, oh getting to the drones. There's a hatch here right-'

Crap. Sorry.

“OHHHHHHHHH-”

Down the rabbit hole. I would feel so embarrassed if those who should look up to me for guidance (in a broad general way) had heard me screaming like a little girl. Quite literally, this voice thing is quite hard to manipulate, and if I try to simply fixate it I will probably end up talking in non-stop monotone like Essay.

‘There are no sound recorders here right?’

Nope, safe. What is here, are the drone assembly and storage facilities. There's not much material or parts for building more drones, just a couple thousand tons, but the billion drones present can be disassembled and reassembled with the different spare parts. Most of them are eyebots, floating heads with either attached weapons or utilities, with it's ‘eye’ as its main weapon or function.

‘Packing magic sure is convenient.’

The blueprints show the drones twice bigger than my head, but they are folded into them shelves to occupy the storage space as discs. Big metal discs still bigger than my head, but it's still a fraction of their size.

The launching pad is a circular ant maw with flexible mandibles, a mechanical launcher. There are multiple of them pointing towards a wall I assume opens up. They stack one above the other so the drone discs can stream from above, get unpacked and powered with surges of energy and get launched in lines. Most drones once launched need to be recovered by ships, otherwise they will float forever or take so long to come back we might as well make another one.

Spray and pray is the tactic here, these drones look really expensive but with the blueprints and facilities here, they can be shaped from pretty much anything, solid or liquid. Plasma and vapor drones could be built, but they are too unstable. The bottleneck is not materials but where such things could be built, there's no need to use hard to find ultra durable, reflective stealth metal and make a single one, we can make thousands of gel-like water drones here.

'Cool, I guess I will take some flying slimes with me to the fantasy world.'

The lens for cameras and lasers can be cheap resin too, and the thrusters activate sparingly. The lighter drones don't even have thrusters, mag-drivers take up half the space instead and don't need any fuel. Most light drones are made to absorb light as a minimal source of energy for flying in case of an emergency while others work like a portable thermal powerplant. Btw their batteries at full capacity range from being able to power a big city on Earth for a day to a month depending on their size. Also, I could power Earth for a century with the battery I have now, and it's at 10%.

'UNLIMITED POWAAAHHHHH'

Too bad I can't shoot lightning from my hands, anyways what is left here is to say that.

‘All. these. guys. SHOOT LAZARS!’

Mining drones with small cargo bays for piece transportation to the industrial ships. Big war drones with both a laser beam and pulsar. Patrol drones with a single pulsar but with bigger drivers or thrusters. Scout drones with precision scanners or tracking relays for the other combat drones.

‘Is this paradise.’

Not a question. Most important of all, I can mix and match them and retrofit as much as I want.

I get on my knees to thank big head. This is just too much, I wouldn't ever be able to do something to deserve to be here or even look at this before, but I must live up to this without a shred of hesitation or doubt. Thank you.

‘It would be cool if you could, you know, give some energy to power things here but I guess that is asking too much.’

As I get up from my knees I kick something accidentally. I don't know what it was but it felt round and fell right above a drone disc pile.

“What is it, HU-01?”

Huh.

‘Where's that coming from?’

“SA? Is that you?”

“Yes(,) what is it with you(?) We don’t have the power to refit these drones(,) unless you have something 'new'.”

“Oh, hmm, not really, I just hit something?... I think and it fell over some droids. Looks like a ball of some sort.”

“You... hit something(?)”

I have a bad feeling about this.

“Please report in at the hangar.”

Oh, the hangar was my next place in this tour. Nice.

‘Engine watching next please.’

Rather than watching, I will just be staring at them since they are all off.

“‘K, I'll be there.”

The hangar is as desolate as it sounds. I mean, there's no air here since it's open to outer space and I can't feel or hear a thing. This is not where the Capital ships are docked, they are currently disassembled somewhere else.

'Should I go see the Caps before heading over to the engines? They might be boring after all. Which way was up again?'

My feet clinging to the metal roof I walk over to the tall fence on the edge, stand on my toes to grab and pull my body over to look over. The white dwarf is so small.

'WaIt shouldn't i be burning?'

There is an asteroid belt just beyond the carrier, it seems it's the remains of destroyed planets that didn't get swallowed up.

'Red giants are scary.'

And dwarfs have low energy output.

'It's not even a reactor anymore right? It's just really hot.'

The energy there is only going downhill, yeah. It's good that our Dyson sphere is just a bunch of individual cells rather than a mega structure, after it's no longer worth it we can just recover them and launch them at another star. Getting to another star is a real hassle though.

The planets are too small to take notice, but the images and data from the scanning shows a lot of stuff going on. The gas giants' orbits are all over the place, but they are tidally locked. Terra means planet with life, and the fantasy world is looking great. There's a dragon's nest on the highest mountain, which was the first form of life identifiedidentified there. They look different from dragons actually, are they lizardkin?

'They are so big, how can they move around? Is there low gravity there?'

Gravity is weaker than Earth's, but not much, just a half m/s. It seems there were some of these guys actually flying when the scan ran. There is definitely magic here, and the cool kind.

'What would it take to power up the carrier with magic?'

Why are you asking me? There's no such thing as a “magic system scanner” to determine if it's the hard coded or power fantasy kind. And other than the wingless dragons living at the top of the highest volcano there's no detailed info on other species. There are a lot of different species, but other than the dragons there's no info on whether or not they are sentient. There's info on their mineral composition but not on how their bodies look like.

'How is this possible, were the images deleted?'

Two scans, one from received EM waves and another from emitted EM waves. The waves were not saved as pictures, they were processed to figure out the composition of everything. Once done, “hi, here is the data processed from what got here from the dwarf's light, and from what was reflected back to us from the focused waves!”, that's it.

Since there was life, we made another scan directed to the top of the highest mountain. But everywhere else it's just statistics on organic mass and chemical composition. There are numbers on living beings inhabiting large areas, but nothing on their body structure other than what they are made of. There's a lot of carbon but that's it, I can't make sense of much else, and the computers that could translate to visual data are shut down.

'Meh.'

Slightly disappointed I turn my attention to the ships here. A few look ready to depart, a single destroyer and ten fighters along with five industrial ships. The fighters are non piloted and generic, a single circular construct with propulsors and thrusters. They work like bigger drones and there's not much to it except they are a lot more independent. The lasers on them are something else, even though these ten were chosen for precision striking they can vaporize through any armor I can remember from Earth in a fraction of a second. The security drones could melt through them, but not vaporize. Also, half of them have stealth capabilities along with some torpedoes or bombs, they work like jets.

'Some... if well organized couldn't they destroy life back on Earth?'

There are two nuclear bombs on the frigate. While the fighters have been chosen for precision and attacking on their general weight class or one step above, the frigate packs one hell of a punch. Also,Also, when I say nuclear I mean fusion, not fission. They are big enough to start a nuclear winter over the continents they hit on Earth, I guess. They would only destroy what's in their vast range of explosion, but would only be capable of somewhat hindering life in other parts of the planet.

'How many of these are here? Can we get a ride on one?'

There're millions of fighters, and no.

The industrial ships are set to start building an external power plant and collecting materials from the asteroid belt. As soon as the cells reach the sun and start focusing the light towards the Supercarriers receptors there's a lot of cool technical details about it-

'Anyways where is Essay?'

Oh yeah, I forgot I had a bad feeling about this.

'Hey look, a robot giraffe!'

Oh god no! Don't go over...

'Huh? Why?'

The ball I had dropped over the droids had followed me and started glowing, I would have closed my eyes if they were still sensitive to this much brightness. The whole scene was then colored a deep violet and the colors beyond. I haven't grown used to infra- and ultra- vision yet so, the 'giraffe' is a post-like metal thing that turns out to be a teleporter. Nice.

The ball then flies over to the giraffe's mouth and the light stops. A few lines appear on the giraffes neck, filling up in between its spots with many shades of conflicting color.

'Yeah, I'm definitely getting sent away.'

“I didn't mean to knock it over, come on! It was just an accident!”

“HU-01(?) I have opened a directive to send you away to this system's Terra(.) What are you playing around with now(?) Please move to a launch capsule(,) cease movement and as soon as we reach the correct orbit path you will be launched.”

“Yes, I will do that! Just, please stop the teleporter!”

[Sorry boy, but you don't want to do that. She doesn't believe in parachutes. Just accept my last gift and get there as fast as you can to get my promised land up and running. Oh, and, have fun!]

“Wait, i-”

Before I could say anything, it was raining. Big head's voice’s echo is made heavier in my mind by the force of the wind and all the rain making me wet. Looking up, there's no sign of the skies, only gray and black clouds with a few lightning strikes in the distance.

I walk towards a tree and stay under its leafs. This is actually kinda comfy, given how big the leafs are, only a few drops get to me but the wind makes my feet wet because the tree isn't large enough. After a few minutes, I get the feeling the rain isn't giving up anytime soon.

'Well, it's not like I would be able to do anything up there anyway.'

Grabbing a twig I walk over to a mud spot somewhat protected by the tree, crouch down and start to draw smiling faces. The rain keeps messing with my emojis, opening holes everywhere, so use my head and torso to cover more land from it. There's always space to draw because the mud spot is vibrating under the heavy rain, when the smiles start to fade I can draw them up again.

'I will try to make some clothes once the rain is over. It's getting kinda cold.'

Hmm, what would make for good clothing... I've been avoiding thinking about this but, do i even need clothing?

 

Heroes in a storm,

Are a spectacle of

Glory ready to form.

Shouts of bravery

Muted by the shrills

Of light's savagery

And it's thousand kills.

 

The heroes don't actually...

know what they are doing,

But from the future

They can hear a desperate call

And from the heavens they fall