Only Earth seems to have inherited buffs… none of the other kids did.  

Yeah, that makes me nervous.

Still: We cordon off the kids in a demiplane between ships (well, except for Star and Ocean’s child, Moon, who IS a ship).  It's as safe as we can get them without me compromising them.

Of course, before we go too far back to civilization, there is something we need to check.  It's all well and good to set a ship up with Regeneration… but we need to know how it translates to ship scale combat.  If it doesn’t work… well, we have a problem.  If it’s too obvious, people are going to know they need to do more, and just keep firing until they can think of something better.  So I need to test and see how well it translates… which means stripping a ship of everyone who might have a problem with getting shot to death, zapping it to see if it repairs itself at all, and how quickly, then blast it into a nonfunctional state, see if it recovers, and blast it AGAIN to what would normally be the point of no return and see if it recovers from THAT.  And of course… if the healing doesn’t work at all, we can simply stop at light damage and fix it up, knowing that it won’t help with ‘more robust’ tests.

So I take our most disposable ship, Stephanie’s latest soulless child.  Seriously: MELEE WEAPONS on a STARSHIP?! Who in their right mind would do such a thing?  Okay, yes, something like a Light Explosion Injector does a lot of damage for a light weapon:  3d10, which averages sixteen and a half damage… but Light Cytoplasm Weapons average eighteen damage, and costs just shy of HALF the build points; add an Adamantine Alloy Mount, and it STILL costs less, but deals much more damage, and at Long range.  A melee weapon requires you get up close and personal, which means if your prey can outrun you, you can’t hit it at all, and even if you can, your prey gets to take a couple of shots at you first… it’s just… SO pointless.

But anyway, that’s why we’re using Stephanie’s latest soulless child as the test target.  I haven’t buffed it yet, and it’s a biomechanical starship, so I can apply just the one buff I want to actually test: Monstrous Regeneration. I do so, fly it a little ways away from other ships, double-check to make sure I’m the only one on board, and give the signal to Linda (as the Rustbucket only has a light weapons, and as they are coilguns, they're firing physical slugs): “OK, tap me until the shields are down, then once more.  Stop there, and we’ll review.”

I watch the ship’s status as the shots from the Rustbucket land true (I’m not piloting, the ship I’m on is a sitting duck), and soon enough exhaust the shields… one more shot and… yep, we’ve got some hull damage, so I flag Linda over the Telepathic link, “That’s good for the moment.  Hold fire please, I’m going to go review.”

“Acknowledged; holding fire,” Linda responds along the same channel.

I head outside (between my first level choices, Starfinder armor on the outside, and using a body made of Starfinder Armor, I’m VERY vacuum rated), and examine the damage.  It’s healing… much faster than I was expecting.  It looks like the spell is applying to hull points, rather than hit points… which means it’ll be clear that the ship recovers.  Huh… it means opponents will know that we’ll get better once they manage to actually hurt one of the so-warded ships.  Still… it could use more testing.  

I update everyone as I climb back into the ship, “Ship is confirmed to be healing.  Give me a moment to strap back in...” I do so, and add “All right; open fire, let’s disable this wreck.”

I wait patiently as the ship is blasted until the lights go out on my console and the ship stops responding, “Okay, we’re there,” I let everyone know, “Cease fire as per test plan, I want to see if the console comes back up from the spell.”

“Holding fire, my goddess,” Linda pipes back into my head.

I wait patiently again, and before too long… yes, the console lights back up.  I experimentally run the engines… they’ve taken some damage, but they function.  Okay then, “Confirmed that the ship is recovering.  Let’s open up the hull properly now.”

“Resuming fire…” Linda sends back, “It’s not often that you boss asks you to shoot him.  I am SO enjoying this.”

I don’t bother responding, just rolling my eyes as the lights soon go out on the console, followed by shots ripping through the hull, getting….

My thoughts are interrupted by shrapnel from a nearby shot going through the chair I’d been sitting in a moment prior.  Evasion rocks.

Now, at this stage, I don’t have updates on ship status anymore, so I’m relying on Linda to let me know when she’s done.  She’ll be getting continual updates from her summoned science officer to let her know how well the ship’s doing, and sooner or later.…

“Done, my goddess,” she sends to me across the telepathic link from my spell, “The ship you’re on is officially scrap.  Holding fire now.”

So I wait.  And wait.  And wait… and eventually, the lights do indeed come back on.  I watch ship's systems as well, and watch as those come back online one at a time. It takes a while, but with no intervention at all, I eventually have a pristine ship again.  That will certainly save on repairs.

Of course, that only tells me about repairs from normal damage… “Linda, please have a science officer target systems, and start again. I'd like to find out just how many systems we can wreck.”

“Acknowledged.  Issuing suitable orders now…” Linda pipes back, and the ship I’m on is again rocked by weapons fire… this time, far more malign.  I watch my console as all systems soon gain the “wrecked” condition… and then the lights go out again.

After a bit more, Linda contacts me, “Ceasing fire, as we've ‘destroyed’ the ship again.”

“Thank you Linda,” I send back… yeah, it feels quite strange, asking people to shoot me.

I wait… and start watching systems after the lights come back on… and eventually, all of them come back up.

Huh. A nearly unkillable ship… and I can apply something like this to any of them. I mean, I still need to ward it from other things so that folks won't just keep it down long enough to shove the ship into a star… but this is doable. For the biomechanical ships, I can use Monstrous Regeneration and ward against the bypasses (Acid and Fire) via Energy Immunity spells. For the purely mechanical ships, I first enchant them as constructs, get them the Blueshine armor property to stop rust and acid (which break Regeneration with Eternal Steel), and then upgrade them again with Eternal Steel and a full suite of buffs.

Great.

I get to work enchanting the other ships appropriately, which doesn't take long (for the biomechanical ships, it’s just a few spells; for the fully mechanical ships, it's two and a half thousand gp worth of enchantments - which works out to two days each - and a few spells).

Of course, I then stop and repaint the inside of Stephanie’s child. I've decided I want that one for myself, as I am SO tired of pink.  Plus of course, then Stephanie can use her own captain’s cabin.

And as it's currently the least effective ship of the fleet, it makes the ideal bait.  As far as everyone else is concerned, the last ambush attempt failed because we simply didn't show on the expected routes… which I'm sure did a number on somebody's credibility, but that’s it.  I want to at least try to end this with minimal bloodshed… but that means arranging for peace talks.  I have the names of the upper echelon folks involved… or at least, a few steps above the first set of ships that came after us. So I could go straight there… but I'd rather speak from a position of strength, which means they need to know we can defeat their current tactics, rather than just avoiding them… and we need to do so spectacularly, as well.

Which, you know, makes the idiotic design of Stephanie’s newest child a good thing.  If a stupid design can down whatever fleet they send after us, well… we should be in a good place for negotiations.

I do put a Consciousness Uplink Drive into the ship (I have a spare from the first ambush attempt), and use the Instant Upgrade spell to give Patricia an Accelerated Datajack.  Of course, I also create a few crewmembers via summoning and buffing to fill things out.  I have everyone else head to various destinations via Starflight from the Alteration Sphere, while Stephanie and Myself enter The Drift on a simple path for Absalom Station, hoping to be ‘ambushed’....