Of course, that puts Controller finishing at about the time the Rendalairns are slated to arrive… but I do have her print up one of each of the over-engineered designs as she finishes them… and of course, I enchant the first Explorer to suit my tastes, which takes ten days to make it into an Animated Object, plus several minutes to apply the buffs.  And yes, I do remove the ship's need to eat… and spend some time redecorating the interior the old fashioned way when I'm done making the magic: I don't want a constant neon pink world.

I can't do much about the major structural features outside, but nobody's going to see those.  Except me.  But this one, not being a person, won't mind if I ogle a little. I name her C2 (for command and control).

I did go with a VI: A nice high-end one with a big skill expander; she'll be able to handle the science officer role just fine… engineering, too. Four summons (buffed up) plus myself and Patricia round out the crew.  Of course I also keep the fighter buffed, but uncrewed; it will serve just fine as an escape pod should the need arise… or just a shuttle if I want to dock with another ship.

Mind you, I'm keeping The Retcon as a pet.

When Controller finishes the Base Ship (which I dub “Decoy”) I park C2 inside the attached hangar when I fill her up with summoned crewmembers… sadly, Decoy is too big to enchant properly… but she'll do fine, I think.

As I’m waiting the final few days for the Rendalairns, I have Controller whip up some lower spec designs without any of the replication technology: A tier-5 Starship Drone (no crew, just a VI), a tier-5 Fighter, a tier-5 Tug (it’s the only Small ship that can accommodate a Heavy weapon), a tier-5 Light freighter, a tier-5 transport, and a tier-10 Explorer.  The drone is so I can flood a battlefield with expendable munitions, the others are for sale.  I have her load the plans for them all into C2 (along with the plans for the other ship designs) and plans for some robotic officers and crew. C2 will be able to kick off an apocalypse if I need, all by herself.

It takes her a few weeks to churn through those, and of course, time marches on. Before Controller is done, we approach the coordinates Pharasma gave me…

…and Controller flags me while I'm having a bath in C2 (the facilities on The Manufactury are far to big for me to use properly): “The Rendalairns you expected are approaching… and they're not responding to the command codes.”

Well… “I somewhat expected that; do you mind getting rid of them?”

“Not a problem; they're now outnumbered by a thousand to one,” Controller sends back, “It's fortunate that everything I print is coming out pink and curvy; it makes it much easier for them to distinguish which ones are unresponsive.”

Four thousand copies of a beast that devastates worlds, in seconds. Quite the army on demand.  But… “Doesn't a Rendalairn revive itself when it's killed?”

Controller forms her avatar to shrug… right, I'm parked in a ship that's inside her, so her projector can reach… nude, interestingly; I guess it's to match how I'm dressed? “Yes, but unless it has nearby victims, it can't do so very often, and when it's a known feature, it's simple enough to counter.”

Oh, and her high beams are on… mmm… that aside… what were we discussing?  Ah, right… it costs a rendalairn four resolve points to come back, the construct only starts with eight, and while it can feed somewhat on others via the Life Siphon ability… the victims have to be spending resolve points in a particular way for it to feed, “So the battle is going well, then?”

“For us. All four are already down, we're just waiting for them to pop back up so we can…” she pauses, “ah, there they go… and back down. One more cycle and they'll stay down.” She rubs a tentacle along her beak, “And speaking of down…” her eyes trace my body.

Right, I didn't spell that out… “That libido is one of the side effects of my power.  Another is that if a male goes off in your womb - or even something vaguely close to one - you’re very likely to get pregnant, even though that doesn't make sense because you don't have that biology, even if precautions are taken.  And honestly, I have enough kids scattered about.”

She rubs a tentacle across her beak again, “Well… there's another hole you can stick it in… it does seem to like me…” She pauses, “Oh, and the rogue cleaning bots should be dead for good now, but I'm still monitoring to be sure.”

Right… her name for the Rendalairns… “So how many of yours did you lose?”

“None,” she smiles as she sashays towards me, “The numbers advantage of your forces means the enemy couldn't get a shot off.”

Really? “My forces, huh? I didn't make them or command them.”

“They were made with your power,” she joins me in the tub, “Even if I did the shaping,” she brings her head close to the water, “they bear your mark, and were doing your will,” she wraps a tentacle around my rock-like rod… right… hardlight… “even if you didn't personally give direct orders to them… I'm just the vessel for your power.”

And she gets the last word in, as all coherent thought on my part goes away under her surprisingly expert ministrations.

Hours later, as I’m winding down and getting ready to rejoin the world of mortals, I consider: The lowly UPB.  The size of a grain of rice, and a basic unit of currency. They’re slightly difficult to make: I have summons working in a factory in Stephanie to make them, and that gets a lot in aggregate... but at the end of the day, they're physical objects, and Controller can copy things very quickly.

So I grab one out of storage, and visit Controller, “Can you scan this?” holding it out in my hand.

She forms her avatar, and grabs it… a nice hard light projector, “Yes. What is it, and how many would you like?”

I shrug, “It's a UPB. They are used for making things without having a pattern saved, and what I'd like is a pattern fill of bags of them in crates loaded into C2's databank.  A thousand of those per bag, a hundred bags per crate,” which puts each bag at one bulk and each crate at a hundred bulk, which is somewhere between five hundred and a thousand pounds.  Oh yes, and I can fit between fifty and a hundred such crates in a standard cargo bay, because weights in Starfinder are inexact.  Still: Fifty crates is five million UPBs, and that's a lot.

She pauses, “This is detailed enough that the necessary scan will be destructive; is that a problem?”

“Not at all,” I reassure the genie I let out of the bottle, “they're easy enough to come by,” for me, “this is just to speed up production.”

She nods, there's a very bright flash, and I smell ozone for a bit until the life support picks up the pace of the vents and clears the air.

“And it's a very simple pattern fill, so…” Controller pauses, “Done.  Would you like a test print?”

I consider, “Yes please,” and watch as Controller nods and a good sized crate appears in a flash of light.

A PINK crate.  Great….

“So how exactly do they work?” Controller seems genuinely curious.

“Oh, I'll show you….” I proceed to take out an… also pink… bag of them… open it, and pull out fifty of the UPBs… which are pink… and use those to craft a basic Mark one healing serum… which comes out pink when I'm done an hour later.  Okay, I'm probably not going to be able to use these like cash: The mark of Patricia's power applies… but they DO work like normal UPBs.

They might feminize anyone directly affected by them, but they work.

Still… pure tech items up to tier twenty, everything else up to nineteen, and all it takes is a few hours. Nice to have.

Controller's reaction? “Oh, that's clever… so I can build things, and then scan them, rather than doing a full render. Huh. Loses some memory efficiency, but should save design time. Normally a full render will be better, but sometimes speed matters.”

“It's also good for when you're busy,” I agree, “Only you can do the rendering, but there's a lot of people,” and people-adjacent summoned creatures, “who can use these to make things.”

“And a print doesn't interfere with a render,” she seems thoughtful, “so I can supply a large number of builders while doing renders, and scan their items. Huh.”

“Also a good plan,” I agree

“Especially so, as I don’t have much in your size,” she considers, “but then, you don't seem to have trouble getting equipment, so…” she pauses, “So what are you going to do next?”

What indeed.