New Dragon Homeworlds, Yrranth & Zokyrth
Unnamed Continent
September 7, 2019
19:33

Everyone standing around Abi had seen her grow in size before, but only a few had seen her actually change her shape. She had looked the same as she did the day we bonded, but she just grew in size, making very few changes. Oya had some ideas for some improvements, so they spent the better part of the previous day working together to come up with a better design.

The design they came up with was one with a narrow forward section that flared out towards the rear. Unlike the current design which had a gradual slope from front to back, the new one would have a pretty consistent height for the first part of the ship. At that point, it would begin sloping up again before flattening out.

The result of the new design meant that the ship would be a little bit narrower, but about twenty percent longer. Some of that added space would be used to add two new weapon types to the ship; mass drivers and missiles. The mass drivers were in a cluster of four located at the front of the ship, while the missile tubes were in two clusters of four, located at the mid point of the ventral hull. The two of them would likely be the bread and butter Abi used to destroy ships, after the energy weapons did their job.

There would be a combined sixty-four pulse cannons and particle beams cannons located around the ship, both to provide point defense and to allow sustained fire if the mass drivers couldn’t be brought to bear. Of those sixty-four, thirty-four of them would be huge turreted pulse cannons while the remaining thirty would be turreted particle beam cannons, with eighteen mounted dorsally and twelve mounted ventrally.

They were able to get by with so few cannons for point defense, as each turret had eight barrels a piece. It would allow for larger areas of space to be blanketed with fire, increasing the chance of destroying incoming missiles or enemy fighters. In those situations where point defense wasn’t needed, the rate of fire and sheer amount of energy being fired would be able to quickly bring down enemy shields.

With the changes, the cargo bay was widened out considerably and would now span from the port side of the ship to the starboard, and could double as a landing bay. If the design was kept going forward, it would allow fighters to be rapidly deployed or recalled, with the ship acting almost like a carrier. As it was, it would hold all three of the Grasshoppers, as well as Oya’s shuttle for the trip back to Veria.

Even with the changes that were happening, the overall area for the crew and passengers to live hadn’t gotten smaller; it had done the opposite. There was about fifteen percent more space, allowing a full-sized gym, pool and additional quarters to be added. Though it wouldn’t be needed imminently, the mess was also expanded by about fifty percent, allowing it to hold several hundred hungry people at once.

When she was done growing and changing shape, her hull was just as smooth as it had been, though she finally changed the color to an extremely dark black that absorbed light. Once she was up in space, it would make it incredibly hard to see her with the naked eye. At least while the engines were inactive.

Her increased size necessitated additional thrusters being added to the rear of the ship, with four more being added to bring the total up to ten. They were formed into an irregular hexagon, with two rows of four thrusters, and then one on either end. Though only four more were added, the total thrust Abi would be able to generate more than doubled.

Someone seeing Abi for the first time would probably guess that she was a passenger ship at first, as there was no sign of any weapons whatsoever. All of the sixty-four turreted weapons were hidden beneath the hull, as were the four mass drivers and the eight missile tubes. If we were under attack or were going on the offensive, portions of the hull over the entire ship would simply disappear, revealing the weapons underneath. The turrets would need to be deployed, but as soon as they were locked in place, they would be ready to fire.

The moment Abi stopped moving, a huge chunk of information was downloaded into my brain. It wasn’t painful like it had been when she downloaded everything I needed to know about piloting a ship, but it was a little dizzying. It passed quickly, and I once again knew everything about the ship. There were now fifty-eight decks, but only forty of those ran the length of the ship. The remaining eighteen were smaller, but included the observation deck, gym, pool and entertainment parts of the ship, among others.

The bridge was now on the thirtieth deck, situated more towards the rear than the forward of the ship. It’s size did change slightly, growing enough to add five additional stations. They would be unused for now, but once people were trained on her systems, Abi would have a full bridge crew to help her out.

“It looks like it was a good idea to clear more of the forest,” Ben said. “What’s she at now? It’s gotta be over two kilometers.”

I nodded. “Two thousand six meters, a little over four hundred meters wide, and two hundred seventy meters high.”

“So how many decks are there now? There were twenty-five or twenty-six beforehand, right?”

“Yup. There are fifty-eight now, but only forty of those run the length of the ship. The other eighteen are on the tower, as they’re calling it,” I said, gesturing to the highest part of the ship. “The bridge is going to be ten decks below the base of the tower, since it is technically the deepest and most protected part of the ship.”

“She definitely looks a lot better now than she did, but where are all the guns?” Mason asked.

I smiled and looked upwards while sending to Abi. A confirmation later and a number of sections of hull disappeared, allowing everyone to get their first look at the updated weaponry. Tich was largely responsible for it, as he worked with Abi and Oya to find the best places to mount them all.

With a regular manufactured ship, there were a number of hardpoints where weapons could be mounted. They allowed for the ability to swap out weapons with some time in a drydock, but weapons could only be mounted on those hardpoints. If you wanted to put weapons in another spot, the ship would need to spend even more time in drydock as part of the hull was cut up to make space.

Abi didn’t have that issue whatsoever. If we wanted to mount a weapon somewhere, everyone just had to evacuate the ship and she could put one there in short order. It would require some modification to make room to store them and run power to them, but that didn’t take more than a few minutes to half an hour, depending on the size and type of the weapons.

“Holy shit!”

I saw Tich nodding in approval.

“The turrets you see with eight barrels are pulse cannons; basically massively upgraded versions of the pulse rifles we’ve been using. They’ll be used primarily for point defense, but they’ll also be very good at bringing down enemy shields, just from the amount of energy being fired.”

“The longer barreled ones in three clusters of four are the twelve particle beam cannons. There are another three clusters of six on the dorsal hull as well, and their main job will be able to knock out shields. I think they can each sustain a beam for about five seconds before needing to cool for eight before they can be fired again, so they’ll have some pretty good uptime during an engagement.”

“You can’t see them, but at the front there are four mass drivers. They’re pretty damn big, with each being four hundred meters long. Abi is in the process of making crystalline rounds housing an iron core which will be the primary projectile fired out of it. She’ll also be making some solid depleted uranium penetrators as soon as we get to Veria and we can acquire several tons of the stuff.

“And lastly, two clusters of four missile tubes are also up on the dorsal hull. We’ll also need to procure supplies so she can make the missiles, but there is probably going to be a wide variety of those as well. I’m talking nuclear, ionic, laser delivery missiles and maybe some missiles that will bore into armor before detonating. She’s got a ton of firepower now, though not all of it will be able to be used right away.”

“Power issues, right?” Ben asked. “There is only going to be like a couple hundred people onboard for the trip back to Earth.”

“Yeah, it’s going to require a full crew to keep everything powered. We would have enough people to keep the shields up if we got in trouble, but we wouldn’t be able to fire back with anything but missiles. Once Abi grows another half dozen times then she’ll probably replace the pulse cannons with gauss cannons which consume a miniscule amount of power. That will pave the way for more particle beam cannons to be added, or other stuff like plasma cannons or the energy weapon equivalent of a mass driver.”

“Well at least I’ll know that my daughter will be well protected,” Xigios said as the two of them walked up.

“Well not as safe as we were on the way here, but safe enough. I’m not sure how much you heard, but there won’t be enough personnel onboard to keep the shields up and fight back. If something weird happens like we get interdicted, then we’ll be relying on the shields and her speed to get out of there.”

“I’m sure it will be fine. Abi is the fastest ship in this galaxy so she can probably make a couple of jumps to throw people off before finally setting course back to Earth. It wouldn’t add more than a day to the trip, if that.”

I nodded. “Do you both have everything? We’ll be loading up momentarily. Speaking of that…”

[Abi, can you lower the ramps so we can get this show on the road?]

[Certainly.]

“Esriro’s like every woman, she’s got four or five suitcases full of clothes ready, since this will be a vacation for her, of sorts. Me? I travel light.”

“Well, the ramps are coming down, as you can see, so you can head aboard and find your rooms. The information should have been sent to your phones. I believe you’re both on deck thirty-one.”

“That we are. I spent a few minutes looking over the layout, and I think I’ve got an idea of where everything is. If not, I’ll just look at the map that was given.”

“Perfect, I’ll see you aboard.”

The two of them turned and headed towards the closest of the five ramps that had been lowered to allow access. That many weren’t needed with so few people boarding the ship, but they would be very useful for rapid embarking and disembarking for one of Abi’s growths later on down the road.

There were a few additional things being loaded onto the ship, including a bunch of slaughtered quillbeasts and forty that were still living. The living ones would be going to Veria, where they would be split up after a lengthy quarantine process. Half of those would be a new addition to the menagerie, while the remainder would be going to the Warvyn ranch. Oya enjoyed the taste, so in a few years time she would be able to have fresh quillbeast whenever she wished.

The Black dragons and dragonkin were indispensable for quickly loading stuff onto the ship. Once the quillbeasts were tranquilized and loaded into shipping containers, the stasis field built into the containers was activated and then they were moved onto the ship. The slaughtered quillbeasts were much easier to load. All that needed to be done was have one hand on a ramp and another hand touching a quillbeast and it would be put into Abi’s dimensional storage. It could either remain there, or it could be removed and placed into the large walk-in freezer attached to the galley.

It only took an hour or so to get everything loaded, but we needed to wait for Oya to finish her meeting with the dragon council. The original plan was to have her stay behind for about two weeks while she worked on starship designs for the dragons, but she was a woman possessed over the previous two days. Her mech had performed better than she was hoping, so she wanted to get back and start producing more.

She and the dragon council had met multiple times, but they left the designing to Oya. They had a few requests, like a large room that they could use to stretch their wings, and somewhere safe where they could store their eggs, should any dragons lay eggs while offworld. The galley and mess would also be a bit oversized, but it needed to be with the amount of food the dragons ate.

The dragons had no problem staying in their human forms as long as they had a place to stretch their wings, so Oya went with a design that would be quick to build and would be sufficient for their purposes. The design looked similar to how Abi looked now, but rather than the tower-like section, there was a large bulbous area in its place. It also wasn’t a particularly large ship, being a battlecruiser about seven hundred meters long.

The small size meant that it could be built relatively quickly, but it wouldn’t be able to hold more than a few hundred dragons and dragonkin. That wasn’t a bad thing, however, as there were only around eighty thousand dragons and dragonkin, with perhaps ninety percent of those being adults. The mobile shipyards were capable of producing ships many kilometers long, but the dragons would only be able to man a small handful of ships.

As soon as they agreed to the proposal, Thomas ordered his mining company to move into the system and set up operations to strip the asteroid fields and resource-rich planets clean. It would still take them a week or so to arrive, but there was more than enough material brought along to at least get started on the first two ships. Assuming there weren’t any delays, the first two battlecruisers would be ready in a little over three months time.

They finished up in short order and we all filed onto the ship as soon as the council members bid each other farewell. Half of them were coming along with us to Veria and then back to Earth, while the other half were staying put to build a new civilization. Of the eight, Selalea, Bonakr, Linvalma and Savarnei would be returning to Earth, with Bonanem, Olmith, Pharomna and Shaemu remaining on Yrranth and Zokryth.

Even though there would be tens of thousands of light years separating the two groups, they would be able to enjoy instantaneous secure communication, thanks to Abi. With it, they would be able to vote on any issues that might come up, but otherwise just keep in touch with each other and report on their progress.

---

Tich met back up with me on our way to the bridge. “The dragons aren’t with you?”

I shook my head. “Nah. They headed up to the observatory figuring they would get a good view from there. Oya ended up joining them. So how long is it going to take to get to Veria from here?”

“About thirty-two hours, Abi will be able to give you a more exact time. We may need to take a few detours if there are patrols between us and the Pygmaean border, but Abi’s sensors are vastly superior, so she’ll see a fleet of ships long before they see her.”

“Why didn’t we have to detour for patrols on the way into Scyftan space?”

“Pygmaean space also borders Confederation space, so the Scyftan navy puts more manpower watching that border. There are patrols and beacons along the side we came from, but it is a much less traveled section of space, and they’re focused on the Confederation. Naval leadership isn’t worried about them sneaking around and attacking us from behind, because they would have to cut through too many species’ borders to do so.”

“I remember seeing a starmap where the Confederation was pretty much surrounded on all sides. I’m assuming that none of those are friends with them?”

“Hardly. A few thousand years ago, the Confederation was only a fraction of the size it is now. They expanded outward conquering everything in their path, until the majority of species around them formed an alliance to combat them. Their combined navy is about two times bigger than the Confederation’s navy, if not as advanced, but those navies are only continuing to grow.”

“Those hostile nations have also put the Confederation on a clock, of sorts. They’re hemmed in, so they’re stuck buying resources from other species or mining everything they can from their own space. That’s why they’ve abandoned attacking any of the other species around them, except us. Your father and his father before him were well liked, so they’re betting that none of the other species will come to Dhir’s aid. If they can conquer Scyftan space then they’ll have all our resources. They’ll also have access to the rest of the galaxy for the first time in centuries. I’m betting that they will make a move within the next few months. They’re probably already planning it since news that you’re alive has very likely reached them by now.”

“Do you think they’ll succeed?” I asked as the door slid open and we entered the bridge.

“Not a chance. The Indomitables will be on high alert while they’re sniffing out The Storm Bringers, and they’ll be ready to move if anything comes up. Over a thousand cloaked ships will be more than enough to stop the assault, especially with all of the upgrades the older ships are getting.”

“Sorry to interrupt you, but we are ready to depart.”

“Take us out, Abi,” Tich said.

“Actually, set course for the nearest asteroid field outside of this system that won’t take us too far out of the way.”

“Done,” she replied as she lifted off the surface of Yrranth.

Tich looked at me questioningly.

“It’s been over a month and I’ve never seen Abi fire her weapons. Now that they’ve been upgraded quite a bit, I want to check them out. I figured an asteroid field would be the best bet, but don’t want to reduce the amount of resources available for the dragons, even if it was by a small amount,” I answered. “How long will it take to get there, Abi?”

“Twenty-three minutes and forty-one seconds.”

“You’ve spent some time in Battlestate, haven’t you?” Tich asked. “Surely you’ve fired weapons inside of the game.”

“Sure, but I hardly think that is a good comparison. Our ships only had a small amount of weapons and they weren’t particularly powerful. You never took a new ship out for a spin when you were in the navy?”

“Once or twice,” he admitted. “They’re all the same, really. In all my years around ships, there hasn’t been anything new, just scaled up and more powerful versions of stuff we already have. I think the closest anyone has come to creating something new is when a group of scientists in the Confederation started messing with antimatter, trying to use it to power ships and make bombs. What do you know about antimatter?”

“Not a thing. If Ben were here he’d probably be telling you all about it.”

“The entire universe is almost entirely made up of matter, and any antimatter that is created is usually annihilated as soon as it forms. Whenever antimatter and matter meet, they destroy themselves, releasing an incredible amount of energy. Depending on the amount of antimatter, the energy they release can be tiny and inconsequential or they can make a nuclear explosion look like a firecracker.”

“The problem with antimatter is containing it so it doesn’t explode. If you were able to do that, then a single gram of antimatter would release one hundred eighty trillion joules of energy when that containment ended. That’s about twenty percent more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. Now imagine using five kilograms of antimatter. That explosion would be over three and a half times more powerful than Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear device ever detonated on Earth.”

“While explosives aren’t very effective in space, antimatter bombs or even nuclear bombs would still get the job done. They wouldn’t create a destructive shockwave like they do in an atmosphere, but the heat would still be enough to melt the hull, and the radiation enough to kill the entire crew. I bet that a bomb using ten kilograms of antimatter would have no problem killing everyone aboard this ship if it were detonated close to the hull.”

“So what happened to the group of scientists?” I asked.

“They vaporized the moon that their base was built on. Judging by the recorded explosion, they had to have had several hundred kilograms of antimatter stored there. How the containment failed is anyone’s guess, but any further research was quickly banned in Confederation space. I have no doubt that they’re continuing the research in secret, and sooner or later they’ll find a way to create a safe containment system. The day that happens is the day when they’ll become a much bigger threat than they are currently.”

“Other species have to be working on it as well, right? If everyone has the ability to deploy antimatter bombs, then everyone will be on even footing.”

“Oh they are, and they have been, it’s just not a very easy problem to solve. If a single molecule of oxygen were to find its way to, say, a gram of antimatter, then it could start off a chain reaction that breaches containment. That chain reaction, like a domino effect, would result in the entire gram of antimatter exploding, releasing all of its energy. Nuclear devices are pretty safe; they’ll only explode when you want them to. Antimatter will explode just given the chance.”

“What are the chances of the Confederation perfecting it, or at least making it workable by the time you suspect them to make their big push?”

“Miniscule,” Abi answered. “I’ve been monitoring as much as I have been able to. They wisely keep all of their research off networked computers, but they’re sloppy when it comes to communications. I’ve intercepted a number of communications back and forth since their original research site exploded and there has been delay after delay, setback after setback. If they do have some sort of breakthrough, then I’ll forward the information on how to make a functional antimatter device to The Indomitables.”

“You know how to make them?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course,” she chuckled. “I have a great deal of knowledge on how to build stuff that people only dream about. Portal drives, hardshields, artificial wormholes, wormhole drives, singularity drivers, you name it. If it is possible, I probably know how to make it work.”

“Wait, back up a bit. I got the first four, but what was the fifth one you mentioned?”

“Singularity drivers are basically upgraded mass drivers that fire miniature black holes. Very deadly against ships, the black holes last a short time before winking out. You can also do the same thing with missiles, but that is a much harder prospect because you don’t have the power of a ship to draw from.”

“So why add four mass drivers to the ship when you could’ve added four singularity drivers?”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“There are safeguards put in place to prevent my kind from disclosing information that civilizations are not ready for yet. They are also there to prevent the person one of us has bonded to from using such information to conquer other species. While I know how many different technologies work, I cannot use them or disclose how they work until at least some of the surrounding civilizations figure it out on their own. I know that Confederation scientists have discovered how to contain antimatter, so I am able to disclose that information if I wish to.”

“Not all of the technologies I have knowledge of rely on nearby civilizations discovering them first in order for me to use them, however. Transportation technologies are one of those that are exempt, but they instead rely on our bond and how many times I have grown. Once I reach my fortieth growth, I will be able to add a portal drive to the ship.”

“It will take up about ten percent of the ship, but it will allow us to jump lightyears at a time almost instantly. It requires roughly fifty million mana to jump one hundred lightyears, so at that point I will be able to jump us from Earth to Scyftan space or Scyftan space to the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy in four jumps. With a full crew it should only take a few hours to top off my mana, so we could make the sixty thousand lightyear journey in less than a day.”

“It would probably be best to hold off on going to the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy to look for the rest of my brothers and sisters until I am able to form and use my portal drive. It will substantially decrease the amount of time we’ll be gone, so instead of a month we could be there and back in a couple of days.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“It wasn’t important,” she answered. “Let’s say that a month ago I told you that once I reached my fortieth growth I would be able to create and install a portal drive. It would allow you to get from one side of this galaxy to the other in mere days, rather than over a month. You probably would’ve put all of your energy into making that happen as soon as possible. The same goes for any other technology that is available as I continue to grow.”

I opened my mouth to deny that, but closed it realizing that I would do exactly what she said I would. Had I known on day one that she had access to technology that humans only dreamed of, I would’ve acquired the necessary Skill Gems and put every single attribute point into Intellect. It would’ve allowed the trip to Yrranth and Zokyrth and then on to Veria happen sooner, but it would still take a long time for the portal drive and other technology to actually become available.

“Alright, you’ve got me there. So what other things will you eventually be able to build?”

“There are too many to list. You might want to sit down.”

I did so and there was another, much smaller flood of information that was downloaded into my brain. There were names and descriptions of what each of the items did, but none of the details on how they worked. There were a few that drew my attention, those being sun satellites, or Dyson Spheres, and something called a black hole bomb.

“It’s something that my creators used whenever they decided that they were going to colonize a galaxy,” she answered when I asked about it. “It involves strategically placing mirrors around a spinning black hole, enclosing it entirely. Once that is done, electromagnetic waves would be fired into the black hole where they would be bounced around, speeding up each time they crossed the black hole and bounced off another mirror. When the electromagnetic waves have reached a sufficient speed, then ‘windows’ can be opened allowing those electromagnetic waves to be harvested for all of the energy they contain. It’s a simplified explanation, but it effectively turns a black hole into an unlimited power source. One that could power whatever you wanted them to power for trillions of years.”

“Why is it called a bomb if it’s just a generator?”

“Because of what happens if that energy isn’t released manually. The electromagnetic waves would bounce around, getting stronger and stronger with each bounce. Eventually they would be strong enough to shatter the mirrors enclosing the black hole, unleashing all of that energy. It would be the equivalent of a star going supernova.”

“That’s a big boom,” I said, unable to imagine the scale.

“Indeed it is.”

---

It only took a few more minutes before we dropped out of space next to a large asteroid field. It was hard to even tell it was there because of how dark the surrounding space was. That changed when a bunch of large flood lights turned on all over the ship, making at least a small portion of the asteroid field easily visible.

“So what do you want to start with first?” Abi asked.

“Well we’ll skip the missiles since they won’t do much. How about working our way from smallest to biggest?”

“Sure,” she replied as the plates over the guns disappeared and they were all deployed.

She didn’t fire right away, instead she let everyone on the ship know what was going on, just so no one would worry. After that was done, she opened up on one of the larger asteroids, using every forward-firing pulse cannon. The bolts crossed the distance between the ship and the asteroid in an instant, boring a large hole into it, but I noticed something.

As each pulse cannon was fired, only two bolts of energy exited the barrels. The barrels were set up in two columns of four, and they fired from top to bottom. They fired incredibly quickly, but when I first saw them, I had assumed that eight bolts of energy were fired at once. It made sense when I thought about it. With only two barrels being used at a time, it would take much longer to overheat, allowing for fire to be sustained for a very long time.

Once the asteroid broke apart, she switched to the particle beams. The moment she started firing the surface of the asteroid practically exploded from charged particles bombarding it at near-lightspeed. It only took a few seconds before a hole was bored through the large asteroid and it broke up into substantially smaller chunks.

Unlike the pulse cannons which fired continuously, the particle beam cannons only fired a sustained beam for five seconds before needing to cooldown for eight. It had taken less than three seconds for me to find out that they were much, much more powerful than the pulse cannons. They would have to be if they had to be responsible for taking down enemy shields.

Lastly was the mass drivers. She found one of the biggest asteroids in the asteroid field and repositioned the ship so we were pointing directly at it. Just as she was about to fire, one of the doors to the bridge slid open and my friends ran in.

“Did we miss it?!” Mason asked loudly, causing me to laugh.

“The pulse cannons and particle beam cannons yeah, but we’ve still got the mass drivers left.”

“I’m only going to fire one round since I don’t have many of them stored right now, and I don’t have any supplies to make more,” Abi said. “Still, you’ll be able to see the destructive power behind a fifty kilogram crystalline projectile with an iron core.”

“Ready?” I asked, to which I got nods all around. “Fire away, Abi.”

She didn’t say anything at all, there was just a barely noticeable vibration throughout the ship and then the asteroid in front of us exploded. Chunks of asteroids went flying in different directions. Some struck the force field surrounding the ship, bouncing off harmlessly, while some were ejected from the asteroid field entirely. Only two pieces of the asteroid remained in the same general area, as a single piece bumped into a now-larger asteroid, where it broke in two.

“That’s a hell of a lot more powerful than what we had on our ship in Battlestate,” Sonja said. “It definitely would have taken us at least two or three shots to break up an asteroid of that size. Even then, I don’t think the chunks of rock would be moving that fast.”

“Size definitely matters when it comes to mass drivers,” Tich said. “The ones you had in Battlestate are probably one hundred meters long? Two hundred at most? The ones Abi made are four hundred meters long. That allows many more coils to be placed along the length of the barrel, greatly increasing the speed of the projectile. It also allows her to control the power behind each projectile that is accelerated. I’d guess that she used thirty percent of the coils to accelerate that projectile to the velocity it was at when it hit the asteroid.”

“Twenty percent, actually,” she replied. “This isn’t a particularly large asteroid field and I didn’t want to take the chance that the projectile would pass through a number of asteroids before flying out into space. There would be a possibility, however remote, that the projectile would continue on and strike a ship or a habitable planet. The velocity wouldn’t be nearly as high as it was when it left the barrel, but it would still be traveling fast enough to do quite a bit of damage if it hit something.”

“Isn’t that always a risk when firing projectiles in space? They’ll never stop moving unless they hit something big enough to stop them,” Sonja said.

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be careful. I would compare it to the landmines that are still active all over Europe, Africa and Asia. Many people lose their lives every year from landmines that were laid during wars that have long ended. Projectiles fired from a mass driver are harder to detect and are an order of magnitude more destructive, depending on what they hit. What if one of those projectiles flew through space for hundreds of years before impacting an inhabited planet or ship, killing dozens or hundreds of people. You could inadvertently start a war.

“I’ve never thought about that,” Mason said. “It’s similar to firing rounds inside of an atmosphere. It doesn’t take a bullet long for a bullet to come to a complete stop, but you still need to be careful not to fire towards a populated area. Any shooting range you go to will have a backstop to catch bullets so you don’t accidentally injure or kill someone.”

“That’s right. You don’t have to worry about smaller projectiles like those out of a gauss cannon, they’ll either strike harmlessly against a hull or burn up when it hits the atmosphere. Once I get supplies to make more rounds for the mass driver, I’ll be inserting a small explosive charge, and a tracking beacon. If a round fails to hit its target and then continues flying off into space, then it will self-destruct, becoming harmless.”

“It also seems like a good way to do a little bit more damage, assuming the round survives impact with a ship,” Mason said. “You could make a hole in the ship just a tiny bit bigger.”

“That too,” she agreed.

Abi demonstrated the pulse cannons and the particle beam cannons for my friends before we jumped back into hyperspace to continue our trip. The brief detour didn’t take much time at all, only adding perhaps thirty minutes to the overall trip. Barring any other delays, we would arrive in just under thirty-two hours.

The five of us were on our way up to the reserved pod room to hop into either The Escape or Battlestate when my mom sent to the five of us, requesting our presence in the officer’s armory. Abi’s previous iteration only had a single small armory, having enough room to allow fifty Spectres to get suited up at a time.

There were two armories now, one huge one, located next to the cargo bay, and another smaller one, located right next to the bridge. The big one was large enough to allow up to two hundred Spectres to get geared up at once. They would go in, pulse their mana at a station and then their favored equipment would appear in front of them. Once they were geared up, they would vacate the station and another Spectre would take their place. If there was a situation where we were getting boarded or were putting feet on the ground, a thousand Spectres could be geared up and good to go in less than ten minutes.

It was a pretty sophisticated system. When each Spectre saved their equipment into the computer, the computer would check the status of their equipment and issue new armor, weapons, power cells or other supplies they might need. If they were low on something or something was broken, it would resupply or replace those items. The entire process was done in Abi’s dimensional storage, and the mana pulse meant that they would only get those items meant for them.

The smaller dimensional storage was meant for the officers, or higher ranked people aboard the ship, in general. It offered the same functionality as the one for everyone else, but it would ensure that leadership and VIPs got geared up as quickly as possible. Neither my friends and I had set up our own loadouts yet, so that was probably why she wanted to meet us. When we arrived there, my mom, dad, sisters and Ryx were waiting for us.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We were waiting until the majority of the dragons had departed so Abi could change the layout of the ship. Now that that is done, it’s time to assign each of you equipment. While no one knows what you look like and the danger level is low, it’s still higher than it was on Earth. Ryx is going to show the eight of you how to pick out all of your equipment and save it into the computer. Once that is done, you will be able to gather it all at once from one of the stations you see around you, like so,” my mom said.

She walked over to the closest station and pulsed mana at it, saying ‘Loadout One,’ as she did so. An armored suit appeared, looking much different than the one that the Spectres were usually wearing. The weapon also looked different than anything I’d seen so far. In the base on Earth, all of the Spectres carried weapons that looked no different than the weapons the military used. It didn’t even resemble the pulse cannons that we had practiced with for the last two weeks.

Unlike the armor that my friends and I had been using, this one was totally enclosed and was standing up when it appeared in front of her. She walked around to the back of the suit which caused the back of it to open, allowing her to walk right into it. It didn’t look like nanites were involved, instead a number of pieces of metal were visible along the edges, running from the neck of the helmet all the way down to the feet. They were reminiscent of a hook and eye. She spun in place allowing us to see the back of her suit, which began closing up on its own. The hooks found their counterpart eye on the other side and then the suit tightened up, locking her into it.

She spun back around and began picking up all of the other items that appeared with her suit. There were power cells, grenades, and other explosives, as well as a whole host of other things I didn’t recognize. Once everything was put into her suit’s dimensional storage, she put on her helmet and picked up her gun before turning back towards us.

“This is one of two new suits at our disposal,” my mom said as her faceplate disappeared. “It’s the Spectre Mk. VII. While you won’t be able to use it inside of dungeons, each of you will be given one, just in case shit hits the fan. The other one is the Spectre Mk. VIII which is an enhanced version that has some similarities to mechs. You’ll see what I mean when you get started. Speaking of which. Ryx?”

“Alright, some of you might have an idea of what an armory is, but this one is quite different. Thanks to dimensional storage, there isn’t a need for rooms full of lockers to hold everyone’s equipment, or a regular armory to store spare gear and equipment. You can get everything you need by walking up to one of these stations and sending a pulse towards the sensor, and also calling out what you want. You’ve probably noticed that each of the stations has a tablet attached to it. This is so you can search for something even if you don’t know the name of it. With a push of a button, that item will appear on the station, assuming you have the correct permissions to requisition that item.”

“When Tesze pulsed her mana at the station, she also called out the loadout she wanted. You can have as many or as few loadouts as you wish, but it is recommended that you have at least one to ensure you’ll be able to get geared up as soon as possible. Now none of you have your pulse rifles with you, but it is easy to change that. Abi?”

As he mentioned her name, five pulse rifles appeared, one at each station, followed by five armored suits identical to the one my mom was wearing. A few seconds later three more suits appeared a little further into the room, but there weren’t any weapons in sight.

“Perfect,” he said as he turned to my mom. “Do you mind getting those five started on learning their new suits while I help these three with their weapons?”

“Sure,” my mom replied, removing her helmet and setting it down at the station she was at.

Her gun followed her helmet and then there were clicks heard coming from the back of her suit. After a few seconds she stepped out of it and led us over to our suits, but not before picking up her helmet again.

“Okay, all of these suits have been tied to your mana signature on file. That means that you’ll be the only ones able to use your respective suits. They’ve got some of the same features, like dimensional storage and injectors built in, but they’ve also got a number of other features. We’ll start with the helmets first. Walk up to your station and remove the helmet from your suit. While deactivated it will come right off, but while activated it will lock into place. Once you’ve got your helmet, put it on.

It came off just as easily as she said it would, with the back of the helmet getting wider so our heads would actually fit inside of it. It was completely dark as I put it on, but as soon as it was in place, everything lit up. A HUD appeared, with a bunch of different information. As I looked around the room, items were singled out and details about those items were available to me. When I looked over to my mom, it showed both of her names, her rank, and outlined her in green, seemingly marking her as one of the good guys. Looking at everyone else in the room, it showed similar information.

The most interesting thing about it was when my mom told us to turn around and look at our guns. When we did that, every bit of information about our guns was available to us, including what parts made up the gun, what type of gun it was, and even the likelihood of it penetrating through our armor. For me it was showing that it wouldn’t be able to penetrate my armor, but for my friends it was different. There was also a number counting upwards in the top right-hand corner, making me think that something was up.

“Surprise!” Abi said, the sound coming from inside the helmet, not my head.